AirlineSim Bloghttp://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2017-12-27T09:16:00+01:00Payment System Upgrade (downtime)2017-12-27T09:16:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-12-27:blog/2017/12/27/payment-system-upgrade/<p>Just in time before the new year, we will upgrade our payment system to a completely new implementation. This has to happen mostly for technical and accounting reasons but also has a few implications for end-users. As such, I have summarized the key facts about the switch below.</p>
<h3>Upgrade and Downtime</h3>
<p>The switch to the new system will take place today, the <strong>27th of December</strong>, probably at some time <strong>between 11:00 and 16:00 CET</strong>. During the upgrade, the registration, login and account management system will be briefly unavailable. Payment will be disabled for a longer period of time until the new system comes online and has been fully configured.</p>
<p>Should you encounter any payment issues after the upgrade, please contact our special support address <a href="mailto:payment@simulogics.net">payment@simulogics.net</a>.</p>
<h3>New Credit Card processor</h3>
<p>After we have seen a lot of issues with our previous partner for credit and debit card processing, we have switched to a new provider that will hopefully be more reliable and work better with a larger variety of banks.</p>
<h3>Prepayment and Online Bank Transfer offline until 2018-01-01</h3>
<p>For accounting reasons, the two payment methods mentioned above will be unavailable between today and the end of December.</p>
<h3>No phone payments after the upgrade</h3>
<p>We have decided to discontinue phone payments (through Micropayment) for now. They pose an accounting nightmare, are very expensive (often with payouts of less then 50% of the actual amount) and only used by a small fraction of our customers. If you rely on phone payments because you have neither a credit card nor a bank account available to you, we suggest you look into paysafecard as an alternative. If that does not work for you either, please contact support to look into workarounds.</p>
<h3>New (and old) payment methods in the future</h3>
<p>The new system makes it a bit easier to integrate new payment providers. This will come in handy once we bring back support for Bitcoin payments some time in 2018 as well as when we come across interesting new providers that we haven't been aware of so far. If you know of a payment method that's popular wherever you live and you think we should support it, please get in touch!</p>New long-term game world: Hoover2017-12-19T18:05:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-12-19:blog/2017/12/19/hoover-launch/<p>It’s almost Christmas - and we’ve got an early present for you! We know many people wished for a new new long-term game world, so we’re launching a new one today!</p>
<p>For the launch of this world we are doing a few things differently: We know from your feedback that balancing long-term game worlds is difficult. A major complaint is that in older game worlds long-time players can achieve such a dominant role that it makes joining that game world unattractive to other players. One aspect of this issue is that there are several larger countries available with unrestricted market access. We therefore decided to remove the free market access for some of them, including Qatar, Pakistan, Colombia, Argentina and more. These countries will now offer space for players without the risk of being conquered by other players with billions of dollars to spare.</p>
<p>The stock market has also caused concerns for many players - mainly because of the cheating potential and the ability to acquire foreign traffic rights. Therefore we have decided to disable IPOs on our new game world. Adding to that, players will only be able to have one holding per account which eliminates tactics in which holdings of a single player are cooperating via third parties. We hope that these changes will enhance fair-play on Hoover and we will keep an eye on that to provide a better gameplay experience for everyone. </p>
<p>Hoover will launch with less demand and a slower growth curve than we had for the last few launches, in an effort to further curb some aggressive start-up strategies. There might be more changes to come in the future. And based on what many players have requested in the past, we will apply the changes to Hoover whenever possible, despite it being a long-term game world. So please note that changes might be coming to Hoover, even if they cause some disruptions.</p>
<p>Last but not least, a word on costs: In our opinion, LT game worlds represent the essential AirlineSim gaming experience. The oldest ones have been around non-stop for more than 10 years and we intend to keep them running for as long as it’s feasible. But as you might know, player numbers drop significantly over such long periods of time and the respective game worlds barely generate enough revenue to keep them financially viable. Some of the measures described above aim to mitigate the issue of player numbers, but for Hoover we also decided to increase the price per holding to 6 credits per day. It should help keep the new world profitable in the long run, making it possible for us to continue offering new LT game worlds.</p>
<p>Configuration summary for Hoover:</p>
<ul>
<li>No used aircraft at start</li>
<li>Only current aircraft types available</li>
<li>One holding per account maximum</li>
<li>Slowly increasing demand over time</li>
<li>No IPOs possible</li>
<li>New list of countries with unrestricted market access</li>
<li>6 credits per day</li>
</ul>
<p>Get started right here: <a href="https://hoover.airlinesim.aero">https://hoover.airlinesim.aero</a></p>
<p>We have updated some airport data for the start of Hoover. It’s a rather short list but we hope to bring more some more updates next year. You can find a PDF showing all airport data updates <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/files/2017-12-19_airport-data-changelog.pdf">right here</a>.</p>
<p>As announced with the start of Otto III, all game worlds will also receive the latest data updates today. Please see the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2017/11/24/otto-iii-launch/">Otto III blog entry</a> for a detailed list of all aircraft data changes.</p>We are hiring a PR & Community Manager2017-12-15T13:00:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-12-15:blog/2017/12/15/hiring-pr-community-manager/<p>As an independent developer of business simulation MMOs, simulogics has been around for more than a decade. Now we are expanding with our new title Prosperous Universe (<a href="https://prosperousuniverse.com">prosperousuniverse.com</a>) to be released in 2018 and we’re looking for someone to bring our communications and community management game up to par!</p>
<p>Since we’re a small distributed team, you’ll be able to work on your own schedule and from wherever you like. But with freedom comes great responsibility: You need to be reliable, creative and self-motivated. </p>
<p>If this sounds interesting to you then make sure to <a href="https://www.simulogics.net/jobs/pr-and-community-manager/">check out the full job ad</a>. Know of someone else who might be a good fit? Please let them know!</p>Otto III launches with updated aircraft data2017-11-24T16:49:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-11-24:blog/2017/11/24/otto-iii-launch/<p>With Christmas just one month away, here’s an early present!
As many players like to join a new game world on the first day, we thought launching Otto III right away without any waiting time and the week-end just ahead should be a welcome surprise and we hope you enjoy it.</p>
<ul>
<li>The configuration is as follows:</li>
<li>No used aircraft at start</li>
<li>Only current aircraft types available</li>
<li>No nighttime bans</li>
<li>Several holdings per account allowed</li>
<li>Increasing demand over time </li>
</ul>
<p>We have also made a whole bunch of changes to various aircraft types. Here are the main updates:</p>
<ul>
<li>The cabin dimensions have been slightly adjusted for the following aircraft: Airbus A300B2, Airbus A300B4, Airbus A300C4, Airbus A300-600, Airbus A300-600R, Airbus A300-600R HGW, Airbus A310-200, Airbus A310-200 (winglets), Airbus A310-200C, Airbus A310-300, Airbus A310-300ET, Boeing 707-320C Convertible, Fokker 70, Ilyushin IL-86, Ilyushin IL-96-300, Sukhoi Superjet 100-95, Sukhoi Superjet 100-95LR, Yakovlev YAK-42D</li>
<li>For all A330 variants we have adjusted the take-off and landing performances</li>
<li>The A350-900 has been renamed (removed the XWB) and also got a slightly increased bulk cargo volume</li>
<li>We adjusted the max. and certified passengers for the Boeing 707-320B Intercontinental, Boeing 707-320C Convertible, Fokker 70, Sukhoi Superjet 100-95, Sukhoi Superjet 100-95LR</li>
<li>The Boeing 737-8 MAX HGW has an increased range</li>
<li>All Boeing 737-900ER with regular or scimitar winglets now feature the same maintenance values</li>
<li>The Embraer 170 and Embraer 170 LR have quicker turnaround times</li>
<li>All Embraer 170 - 190 have improved maintenance values</li>
</ul>
<p>Keep in mind that not all of these changes are applicable to Otto due its configuration, but they’ll be rolled out to all other game worlds soon as well.</p>
<p>Get started right here: <a href="http://otto.airlinesim.aero">http://otto.airlinesim.aero</a></p>
<p>As with every instance of Otto, Otto III is time-limited. However, we’ve lengthened the running time a bit and Otto III will run for 10 months until 24th September 2018.</p>Development Log 2017-022017-08-30T12:02:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-08-30:blog/2017/08/30/development-log-2017-02/<p>A few months have passed since our last development log so it's about time for a status update before I leave for two weeks of vacation! Work on the new booking classes feature continues slowly but steadily while some overdue work on infrastructure hinders progress a little bit. </p>
<h3>Infrastructure Updates</h3>
<p>AirlineSim isn't just the game itself but a whole range of systems required to keep itself and the development process running. Just a few examples:</p>
<ul>
<li>A configuration management system makes sure that our almost 20 physical servers are always configured correctly and up to date.</li>
<li>A monitoring system has to ensure that all services are running as they're supposed to and that there are no hardware problems going undetected.</li>
<li>A whole set of tools is required for development purposes, for example a build server, a repository server, a translation tool and a tool to manage our airport database.</li>
<li>Central systems for account management, authentication and payment.</li>
<li>Various actual infrastructure systems, for example to send emails and to collect statistical data.</li>
</ul>
<p>And there are quite a few more that I didn't mention. So all in all, there's quite a bit of stuff that needs to be kept up-to-date and running. With some of the respective systems and servers having been online for almost a decade it was about time to do a general clean-up of many of them. So we are in the process of replacing several servers, completely rebuilding our configuration management and streamlining the deployment processes both for our own as well as third-party tools and systems.</p>
<p>A large part of that has already been finished, but we're not quite done yet and I expect this to keep us busy for another few weeks.</p>
<h3>Booking Classes and Diverse Passenger Types</h3>
<p>To be honest, this has turned out to be quite a bit more complex than originally planned and, as is to be expected, progress is slower than it should be. I've reduced the initial scope of the feature to a minimum to make sure that the foundation is working before plugging on more advanced functionality. That means that initially you will be able to define booking classes which allow you to better control interlining and connection pricing, but many of the more advanced functions like baggage settings, cancellation policies etc. will have to wait until a later point in time. Testing, balancing and optimizing the new feature in combination with thew new passenger types (and hence, a completely new rating system) will prove to be challenging enough as it is :-)</p>
<p>That said, this "Phase I" of the project is now more or less feature-complete and ready for larger-scale testing. We're still contemplating internally what such a test could look like, but you can expect news on this within Q3 of 2017. So stay tuned!</p>Quimby VI now live!2017-07-26T11:19:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-07-26:blog/2017/07/26/quimby-vi-launch/<p>Without much ado I just want to let you know that the 6th instance of the Quimby game worlds is now live! If you don't care about the details, you can head right over to get started here: <a href="https://quimby.airlinesim.aero">https://quimby.airlinesim.aero</a></p>
<p>The configuration is the same as for Quimby V:</p>
<ul>
<li>No used aircraft at start</li>
<li>Only current aircraft types available</li>
<li>Double slots</li>
<li>Several holdings per account allowed</li>
<li>Increasing demand over time</li>
</ul>
<p>As with every instance of Qimby, Quimby VI is time-limited and will run for 8 months until 27th March 2018.</p>A321neo, 737-8 MAX and A330-300R land in AirlineSim2017-06-02T09:37:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-06-02:blog/2017/06/02/update-v6.3-226/<p>The last few weeks have seen some very interesting news in the aviation industry and we have been working hard behind the scenes to follow suit within the game.</p>
<p>Although there have been a few first flights over the past few weeks (MC-21, C919, A319neo, 787-10, E195-E2) we still need to wait a little longer until we can fly those types in the game worlds. But besides those first flights we have also seen two entries into service of brand new aircraft. On May 22nd Malindo Air flew the first 737-8 MAX in a commercial flight and on June 1st Virgin America had its first A321neo start flying.</p>
<p>We are happy to introduce both aircraft to the game worlds today. Along with the two narrow-bodies we can also add an additional variant of the A330. The A330-300R is a version that is optimized for short to medium haul routes and has a better per-seat cost compared to the base variant.</p>
<p><em>This update, including the data research, the testing of the new models as well as this very announcement, has been prepared by the new Aircraft Data Team. So once again, thanks a lot to all the volunteers who make AirlineSim possible!</em></p>15th AirlineSim Anniversary in Barcelona - new date2017-05-24T10:29:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-05-24:blog/2017/05/24/barcelona-2017/<p>Finally, we are able to announce the final date for this year's international AirlineSim meet-up in Barcelona: We will celebrate AirlineSim's 15th Anniversary on <strong>October the 21st</strong>! That's a bit later than originally planned, but the temperatures will be more bearable and prices for flights and hotels will be considerably lower.</p>
<p>Find all the details, including hotel recommendations and information on how to sign up on our event page: <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/events/2017/BCN">www.airlinesim.aero/events/2017/BCN</a></p>
<p>We're looking forward to meeting you in Barcelona!</p>Development Log 2017-012017-04-29T11:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-04-29:blog/2017/04/29/development-log-2017-01/<p>We haven't released many development news in a while. As such, it felt like another issue of the development log was in order again. I would love to release them on a more regular basis, but at the moment it is quite hard to predict when anything worth writing about happens: As always, I have to work on external projects next to AirlineSim to make ends meet and we've also been very busy working on <a href="https://prosperousuniverse.com">a new title</a> slated for release later this year. Given these constraints, I'll stick to an irregular schedule for the development log for the time being.</p>
<h3>Team Changes</h3>
<p>This isn't really development news in terms of "software development", but it's a development nonetheless: This year, AirlineSim is 15 years old. Many things have changed over the years, team members and supporters came and went. But the general way of how AirlineSim is run as a project hasn't changed all that much. Many things around AirlineSim have always depended on the work of volunteers (think of translations, data research, forum moderation and much more), but recently we did a bad job of on-boarding new supporters. This was mostly due to the fact that there used to be only one <em>team</em>: Either you were a member or you weren't. And when you were, it was not clearly defined what your jobs and responsibilities were.</p>
<p>So in an attempt to improve this, we have for several months now been busy developing and introducing a new team structure. We decided to split up our monolithic team and move to <em>teams</em> — plural — instead. Each of these teams has a well defined set of goals and acts as an autonomous unit in achieving those. With less people involved per specific team, things should move quicker and more efficiently.</p>
<h3>Aircraft Data Team</h3>
<p>One example of such a team as described above is the <em>Aircraft Data Team</em>. As the name suggests, they take care of maintaining, improving and extending AirlineSim's aircraft database. Plenty of new types are currently in the works so we will have them ready for release once they go into commercial service in reality.</p>
<h3>Booking Classes and Diverse Passenger Types</h3>
<p>Here, the primary goal is to get the basic feature playable. Up until now, most of my work was focused on the technological foundation that allows us to have dozens of booking classes and a wide range of different passenger types. Since it is extremely important to get testers into the game to start balancing the new rating system, making the new feature actually usable is my top priority. Once that's done, we might actually open a public test world at some point...but one step at a time :)</p>
<p>That's about it for this issue. Turned out to be more of a status update than an actual development log, but I hope to be able to publish more feature-centric updates in near future!</p>Update 6.3-214: Updated aircraft data and new profile pictures2017-03-29T10:43:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-03-29:blog/2017/03/29/update-v6.3-214/<p>The recently started <a href="http://otto.airlinesim.aero/">Otto II</a> game world comes with all aircraft types available, even some very old ones. And as quite a few players had to find out the hard way, some of those types are still missing correct cargo capacity data required in game worlds running with Dynamic Turnaround Times. Thanks to our new Aircraft Data Team (more on that in a future post), this problem has been resolved, and the following types now come with proper data:</p>
<ul>
<li>Convair CV-580</li>
<li>Ilyushin IL-114T</li>
<li>Lockheed L-188C Electra</li>
<li>Lockheed L-1011 Freighter</li>
<li>NAMC YS-11F</li>
<li>Shorts 330-200F</li>
<li>Shorts 360-200F</li>
<li>Tupolev TU-154C</li>
</ul>
<p>Beyond that, pleurotides kindly provided a new batch of beautiful aircraft profile pictures for the following types:</p>
<ul>
<li>Antonov AN-12 (2 variants)</li>
<li>Avro RJ70, RJ85 and RJ100</li>
<li>BAE 146 (8 variants)</li>
<li>Boeing B707-320 (3 variants)</li>
<li>Ilyushin IL-18D</li>
</ul>
<p>The new profile pictures will be available in all game worlds later today.</p>Update 6.3-206 and launch of Otto II2017-03-23T13:26:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-03-23:blog/2017/03/23/update-v6.3-206/<p>First the important bits: Today we have launched the second incarnation of our temporary game world Otto. It will run until mid-November and the special configuration looks like this:</p>
<ul>
<li>All aircraft types can be ordered, even out-of-production ones.</li>
<li>At the beginning there are no used aircraft.</li>
<li>Multiple holdings are allowed.</li>
<li>Normal slots.</li>
<li>Low demand increasing over time.</li>
</ul>
<p>To get started, just click <a href="http://otto.airlinesim.aero/">HERE</a>.</p>
<p>The launch comes with a small maintenance patch that includes the following updates:</p>
<ul>
<li>CHANGE: Minimum equity required to place buy orders for stocks.</li>
<li>CHANGE: Minimum equity required to place cash bids on aircraft offers by private companies.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Some flights would not require fuel when operating distances above range II.</li>
</ul>Update 6.3-200 with hard slot blocking rules2017-02-27T10:30:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-02-27:blog/2017/02/27/update-v6.3-200/<p>Today is the day: After we postponed the introduction of hard slot blocking rules <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2017/01/16/slot-blocking-rules-postponed/">last month</a>, they get rolled out to all game worlds today. More precisely, these are the relevant changes introduced by today's patch:</p>
<ol>
<li>The hard slot blocking rules are applied during flight instancing. Whenever the system encounters a now illegal flight it will mark it with an error automatically, thereby blocking it from instancing and freeing any occupied resources (primarily slots). So effectively, all illegal flights should be disabled in about one week, the latest.</li>
<li>The new relation-based landing fee model that has been active in recent game worlds is now the standard in all game worlds.</li>
</ol>
<p>Besides these visible changes, quite a bit of behind-the-scenes stuff went in, mostly to allow for better support processes and to get the game to work with a new version of our account management system. Not exciting, but necessary maintenance.</p>
<p>As usual, should you encounter any issues, don't hesitate to contact support!</p>Enforcement of new slot blocking rules postponed2017-01-16T16:00:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2017-01-16:blog/2017/01/16/slot-blocking-rules-postponed/<p>This is just a quick update to let you know that the hard enforcement of the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2016/11/21/quimby-v/">new slot blocking rules</a> has been postponed to the end of February. A soft enforcement has been in place ever since the launch of Quimby, so adjusting existing flights or planning new ones is already affected by the new rules.</p>
<p>While the original 10 weeks between the announcement of the new rules and their hard enforcement should be enough time to adjust possibly affected flight plans, some of you requested a bit more time, especially since the Christmas holidays fell into the mentioned timeframe. </p>
<p>The request was brought before the UAB and the board voted in favor of postponing the introduction by about a month. There's also agreement that no further extension will be granted after that, though. Otherwise, affected players that have already put in the effort to adjust their schedules would be placed at a disadvantage.</p>Signing off until 20172016-12-23T13:45:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-12-23:blog/2016/12/23/signing-off-until-2017/<p>And just like that, another year draws to a close. As every year, we will take a few days off of work to spend some time with family and friends. We will keep an eye on our servers though and we'll try to make sure that things continue to run smoothly over the holidays. If you send messages to our support team over the coming days, please expect somewhat longer response times.</p>
<p>If you plan on spending some of the free time around the turn of the year playing AirlineSim, we've got an early Christmas present for you: When buying credits anytime between now and the 26th of December, make sure you use voucher code <strong>HOLIDAYS16</strong> to receive 30 free credits on top.</p>
<p>On behalf of the whole AirlineSim team, I wish you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! See you in 2017!</p>CS300, Tools to deal with Slot Blocking Rules and new Landing Fees2016-12-14T10:41:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-12-14:blog/2016/12/14/cs300-slot-blocking-helpers-landing-fees/<p>Just in time for the CS300's entry into service with airBaltic, the type is now also available in AirlineSim.</p>
<p>But the introduction of the CS300 is not the only reason for today's update. Based on the feedback we received following the introduction of the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2016/11/21/quimby-v/">new restrictions against slot blocking</a> we built a few helpers into the game: Most importantly, it's now easier to see which flights are affected by the new rules. On the Scheduling, Market Analysis and Inventory pages, affected routes now carry a small marker. Besides this, the performance and aircraft evaluation tools will tell you whether an aircraft type may operate on the selected route.</p>
<p>In case the new tools helped you discover remaining violations in your schedule: Don't panic! As has been announced previously, we don't plan to actively enforce the new rules (including both slot restrictions as well as prohibited city pairs) before the end of January. So no flights will be cancelled before then.</p>
<p>We are and always have been aware that the new rules will find both supporters and opponents throughout the player-base. But over the past few years, we have learned the hard way that regulations against slot blocking are inevitable. As such, we do not intend to retract or adjust the new rules - a stand that the User Advisory Board still supports, even after additional discussions. We therefore thank all players for their feedback and understanding.</p>
<p>Last but not least, we'd like to announce another change that so far has only affected Aspern and the game worlds launched after it, but that we will roll out to all other game worlds at the of January 2017 as well: Said game worlds launched with a different landing fee structure. This fee structure does not only take into account the size of the destination airport, but also the connection that's being served. The intention is to encourage plausible flights with small equipment between large and small airports while increasing the fixed costs for flights with such equipment between large airports.</p>
<p>While the hard roles against slot blocking mostly aim for a prevention of "slot grabbing" in early phases of the game or when larger amounts of slots become available, the new landing fees try to support an efficient long-term use of slot capacities.</p>
<p>The landing fee change will affect the following game worlds: Kaitak, Idlewild, Devau, Nicosia, Croydon, Tempelhof, Fornebu, Stapleton, Meigs, Pearls, Gatow</p>Quimby V launch and November Patch2016-11-21T12:40:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-11-21:blog/2016/11/21/quimby-v/<p>The fifth incarnation of our Quimby game world is now live. It runs with a fairly standard configuration: No used aircraft at launch and multiple holdings per account allowed. The only real difference is that twice the usual amount of slots is available. The game world will run for 8 months again until July 21st 2017. If that is all you know you can <a href="http://quimby.airlinesim.aero/">head over to the new game world</a> right away.</p>
<p>Quimby V runs the latest version of AirlineSim that's also been deployed to all other game worlds today. The respective changes are outlined below.</p>
<h3>New rules, directly in the game</h3>
<p>Up until now, our game play and naming rules resided in our wikis. Since we do not really maintain our wikis anymore and will phase them out eventually, it made sense to move our rules directly into the game. If you open the <em>database menu</em> in any game world now, you will find three new links to the game rules, naming rules and the list of prohibited country and airport pairs.</p>
<p>Before integrating the rules directly into the game, we asked the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/forum/34-user-advisory-board/">User Advisory Board</a> to modernize and harmonize them. The previous rules had been around for many years and were somewhat dated. Also, there were some major differences between the (original) German version and the English translation that was added later. These issues have now been addressed so that we once again have clear and non-conflicting sets of rules in the two most important languages spoken around AirlineSim. </p>
<p>Since the rules are now a part of the game's codebase, our volunteer translators have the chance to easily translate the rules to any other language currently available as well.</p>
<h3>Automated measures against slot blocking</h3>
<p>Unfortunately, when done on purpose, slot blocking is the most common kind of cheating in AirlineSim. But even when new players flood large airports with small (and therefore seemingly cheap) aircraft because they don't know better, slot blocking is an annoyance to any player interested in a realistic and fair simulation.</p>
<p>Although it's impossible to find a definite solution to this problem, the November patch at least brings a few counter-measures against the primary means of slot blocking:</p>
<ol>
<li>Small aircraft are now prohibited from operating between large airports. The exact combinations that are prohibited are type-specific and a new matrix on any aircraft type's information page will show you exactly where it can be employed. You can find more information on this in the Q&amp;A section at the end of this article.</li>
<li>Intra-city flights have always been prohibited according to the rules and a list of the respective city pairs existed <em>somewhere</em>. But the restrictions were not automatically enforced by AirlineSim, leading to wide-spread violation of this rule. From now on, the game won't allow you to schedule flights on the affected city pairs.</li>
</ol>
<p>Once again, these new rules have been worked out with and passed by the User Advisory Board. </p>
<p>As stated above, the new rules aren't the final solution to this problem. But it takes away the most obvious ways to block slots, especially for unexperienced players. Now, if anyone still blocks slots, our staff can more or less assume bad intentions and act quicker and more confident against offenders.</p>
<h3>Questions &amp; Answers</h3>
<h4>How does the new anti-slot blocking system work?</h4>
<p>The system determines whether it is reasonable to use a certain aircraft type on a given route. This is based on the combined market sizes of the connected airports. For example, a Q400 could still be used between a 10- and a 4-bar airport but not between two 10-bar airports. The respective limits have been set by the User Advisory Board. The limits range from rather strict ones for very small aircraft like Cessnas to somewhat relaxed ones for regional jets/props like CRJs. All bigger types (like A32x, B737, CSeries and larger) can be scheduled the same way as before the patch.</p>
<h4>What about cargo flights?</h4>
<p>No limits have been set for cargo planes since the economic conditions are considerably harsher on the freight market. Instead of an automatic solution we'll continue to rely on a case-to-case treatment of cases brought before the User Advisory Board or the AirlineSim team to prevent slot blocking.</p>
<h4>Are there expcetions?</h4>
<p>Yes, for any flight from or to airports with runways shorter than 1000m the above restrictions do not apply.</p>
<h4>Do I have to adjust my schedules now?</h4>
<p>For now, the new rules will not be applied to existing schedules. They only affect the addition or update of flights. The introduction of automated checks is planned for no earlier than January 2017. From then on, flights that break the new slot blocking rules will be deactivated automatically.</p>
<h4>What about other restrictions?</h4>
<p>The banned intra-city connections that have only previously been listed in the game rules will be automatically blocked by the system during scheduling from now on. The list has also been extended by the User Advisory Board.</p>
<p>Flight bans between countries will also be enforced by the system now. This way, you cannot accidentally schedule flights that are affected by political restrictions in AirlineSim.</p>Quimby V Launch Date2016-11-16T11:26:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-11-16:blog/2016/11/16/quimby-v-release-date/<p>As promised, the next incarnation of the temporary Quimby game world will launch this <strong>November</strong>. More precisely, it will open its doors on <strong>Monday the 21st</strong>. While we haven't decided on an exact time yet, we expect the launch to fall into a time window ranging from 10:00 to 16:00 CET. </p>
<p>The launch will be accompanied by a maintenance patch for all game worlds, introducing revised and harmonized game play and naming rules and new automated anti-slot blocking measures. More details on both of these topics will follow on Monday.</p>
<p>Last but not least, if you want to start looking for partners in the upcoming Quimby game world or simply announce your plans and ideas, you can do so on the already opened <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/forum/66-quimby-v/">Quimby V board on the forums</a>.</p>Update 6.3-1352016-10-14T13:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-10-14:blog/2016/10/14/update-v6.3-135/<p>After the announcement of the new <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2016/09/26/booking-classes-and-diverse-passenger-types/">Booking Classes and Diverse Passenger Types</a> feature it has been a bit quiet around here. The ramp-up for the convention made us postpone a lot of other work which we now had to get out of the way before delving back into AirlineSim development. But instead of continuing right where we left off, we decided it was about time to take care of some of the "smaller stuff" again, too. So after months of heavy focus on major new features, here's a little maintenance patch containing some fixes, changes and improvements people have requested over the months (as well as several internal changes invisible to the end-user).</p>
<p>Before you check out the list of changes, a quick heads-up: For anyone who couldn't make it to the convention this year, we will be doing a livestream tomorrow in which we will go over the announcements in detail once more. Find the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/10318-leipzig-2016-livestream/">times and links here</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>NEW: Scheduling: Link to remove speed override for a single day</li>
<li>NEW: Scheduling: Links to set maximum or minimum speed override for all days with flight assignment</li>
<li>NEW: Scheduling: Link to remove speed overrides on all days</li>
<li>NEW: Fleet assignment can be adjusted from aircraft page</li>
<li>CHANGE: Liquidation of leased out aircraft now follows same rules as that of regular owned aircraft</li>
<li>CHANGE: When placing aircraft onto the market, the maximum selectable percentage of the purchase price is now 90%</li>
<li>CHANGE: Display year in list of stock trades</li>
<li>BUGIX: Friendlier error message when entering price in stock market forms in invalid format</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Updates to aircraft data would not be applied (specific to Idlewild)</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Performance tool would not display errors for invalid take-off/landing distances</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Ensure that at least one door per cargo compartment is assumed in loading formulas, even if data is wrong</li>
</ul>Booking Classes and Diverse Passenger Types2016-09-26T18:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-09-26:blog/2016/09/26/booking-classes-and-diverse-passenger-types/<p>The <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/events/2016/LEJ">AirlineSim Convention 2016</a> is over and it has been a wonderful event! Thanks to everyone who made the trip to Leipzig, it was great to meet some of our players in real life once again. As usual, we took the opportunity to present our latest new feature to the public for the first time. After many years of preparation and almost a year of development, we are happy to announce <strong>Booking Classes and Diverse Passenger Types</strong> (BC and DPT). Read all about it in the blog post below, including the answers to some of the questions you'll most likely have. I tried to keep it short, but it's a lot of ground to cover.</p>
<h3>Motivation</h3>
<p>There are two main reasons why we decided to add these features in particular: </p>
<p>Firstly, there are quite a few issues with the existing ORS - the "heart of AirlineSim". Flight ratings are limited and passenger types exist in very broad categories only (one passenger type for all Economy markets, for example) which leads to symptoms like excessive service requirements in classes that would be completely price-dominated in reality. This in turn causes massive under-capacities...airlines in AS compete mostly for slots, not for passengers. The described phenomenon is merely the tip of the iceberg, though, and experienced players can probably list a lot of related problems.</p>
<p>Secondly, while interlining is one of the most important components of the game there's almost no way to control or influence it below the "contract/no contract" level. In reality, interlining also serves as an important instrument when it comes to sales and distribution, something that is not modeled in AirlineSim at all.</p>
<h3>New Features</h3>
<p>There isn't <em>one</em> new feature. It's more of a suite of features that depend on each other. I’ll describe the most important ones below.</p>
<h4>Booking Classes</h4>
<p>Similar to reality, AirlineSim will allow you to define so-called <em>booking classes</em> which split a single service class - like Economy or Business class - into several ones. This enables you to set different prices, booking conditions and connection settings per booking class, giving you a lot more control over who books your flights when, under which circumstances, and at which price. You can define up to 26 passenger classes and 10 cargo classes. </p>
<p>A simple example: You could specify two booking classes for economy. One for direct flights and one for connections. You would then configure an airport pair in a way that 40% of the available Economy capacity is used for the direct class and 60% for the connection class. The direct class would be offered at a higher price than the connection class because you want to give passengers an incentive to use your network. To avoid the cheap price to support the network of interlining partners, you would only allow connections between your own flights - so-called "online connections".</p>
<h4>Diverse Passenger Types</h4>
<p>All this wouldn't make too much sense if we would stick to three passenger classes mapped 1:1 to the available service classes. So everything was rewritten to support an arbitrary number of different passenger types, all of which have their own requirements and preferences. So there might be an engineer that has to be at an oil platform in the middle of nowhere as soon as possible and that's all that matters to her, so she'll book the fastest connection at basically any price. The opposite would be a low-budget leisure traveller who's completely flexible in terms of schedule but wants to pay as little as possible. In between these two extremes there is a wide range of diverse passenger types and you'll have to decide which ones you want to cater to. </p>
<h4>Arbitrary Cabins</h4>
<p>This is a feature for advanced players: It allows you to define arbitrary <em>physical</em> cabins to install on your planes. The idea is that oftentimes, different service classes actually share the same cabin. Think of Economy and Business class on intra-European: Here, only a movable curtain separates the Economy from the Business passengers. With arbitrary cabins, this will be possible in AirlineSim as well, allowing for more flexible capacity adjustments. In future versions, adjustments might even happen dynamically, based on the current booking situation. </p>
<h4>Configuration Templates</h4>
<p>The configuration options you have for airport pairs and flight numbers will only grow over time and the addition of booking classes has already made them a lot more complex. For this reason we've built configuration templates: You specify a set of matching criteria like distance range, involved airports and others and whenever you create a new flight number or airport pair, the settings defined in the first matching configuration template will be applied. This way, you can specify combinations of settings like prices, service profiles and others for whole categories of flights instead of just airport pairs.</p>
<h3>Roadmap and Outlook</h3>
<p>The BC/DPT feature in its current form is just the beginning. Over the coming years it will serve as the foundation for a lot of advances features like distribution channels, choice of passenger service systems, overbooking, better statistics, passenger loyalty systems, or even often-requested features like codeshare and charter flights. We have a lot of ideas and we can't wait to realize them.</p>
<h3>Q&amp;A</h3>
<h4>When will this feature be available?</h4>
<p>The version we showed in Leipzig was a very early development build and many things are still missing. Before we can open it to the public, lots of things still need to be added and completed. While we aim for the end of 2016, it's more likely that we'll have an early access version ready in Q1 of 2017. </p>
<h4>Will this feature be rolled out to all game worlds?</h4>
<p>This feature is built in a way that allows it to be rolled out to existing game worlds. Since we won't be able to support two different development branches of AirlineSim indefinitely, we are more or less forced to roll out the new version to all game worlds eventually. How and when this will happen is completely open, though, and depends a lot on our findings during public testing.</p>
<h4>What would a roll-out mean for existing airlines?</h4>
<p>Since the flight rating system has been rewritten from scratch it is very hard to tell what the exact effect on existing airlines would be. The overall amount of passengers will remain the same, but their booking behavior will be completely different. So while it is unlikely that airlines will see no bookings right after the patch, adjustments to a changing market situation will become necessary eventually. We will run mass tests with actual data from live game worlds to develop a feel for the kind of effects that are to be expected.</p>
<h4>Isn't this feature too complex for players to manage?</h4>
<p>In theory, you can just continue playing AirlineSim the way you used to. In fact, when you set up a new airline and stick to the default settings, this is exactly what the setup will look like (three booking classes for Economy, Business and First, one for cargo). Over time, when you start experimenting with the possibilities offered by the new feature, you can add complexity where and to the extend you like. We will listen carefully to the feedback we receive and add helpers and comfort functions wherever they are necessary to manage this complexity.</p>
<h4>Can I try this out somewhere?</h4>
<p>Not yet. While attendants of the AirlineSim Convention already got a sneak peak at the new version, it is not ready for the general public just yet. As soon as we have a stable version ready for testing we will open a game world for everyone to try it out.</p>
<h4>Where can I learn more about this?</h4>
<p>Since the feature has been announced now, we intend to leave "stealth mode" and inform more openly about the ongoing development. So expect development logs, feature videos and maybe even development live streams in the near future.</p>Leipzig 2016: We want your questions!2016-09-15T13:45:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-09-15:blog/2016/09/15/lej-2016-qna/<p>Only about one more week until the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/events/2016/LEJ">AirlineSim Convention 2016</a> will begin! As usual we will use this event to present the next big feature for AirlineSim and - if everything works according to plan - attendees will be able to try out the new functions immediately.</p>
<p>Besides the feature presentation I will of course talk a bit about the past year and our short- and mid-term plans for AirlineSim. Should there be enough time left afterwards, I'd love to also touch on a few subjects that you might be interested in. I'm thinking about topics that don't fit into the scope of a forum post or that make a good starting point for a live discussion.</p>
<p>So if you have questions that you would like to get answered in LEJ, <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/10239-leipzig-2016-qa/">please let me know here</a>. It doesn't matter whether it's about technology, game design, community or feature ideas...any suggestions are welcome.</p>
<p>Just like in previous years, we plan to record the presentations from LEJ and upload them to YouTube. So even if you can't make it to the convention, you might want to add your questions to the list.</p>The CS100, brought to you by Otto2016-07-15T12:56:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-07-15:blog/2016/07/15/otto-launch-and-cs100/<p>Just in time for the real-life entry into service of the Bombardier CS100 with Swiss, you will be able to operate this type in all game world as of today. But who the heck is Otto?
</p>
<h4>New game world: Otto</h4>
<p>That’s right: Our second temporary game world is now open and it is called, well, <a href="http://otto.airlinesim.aero/">Otto</a>! Let me explain our somewhat creative naming choice: Since our temporary game worlds are named after aviation pioneers but the surname of the legendary Otto Lilienthal is a bit long (and somewhat overused), we decided to go with the catchier and shorter first name this time.</p>
<p>Otto comes with a more or less standard configuration and allows to have more than one holding per account. Contrary to most of our other recent game worlds though, it starts with second hand planes from the beginning and therefore offers a bit more variety when it comes to aircraft types.</p>
<p><a href="http://otto.airlinesim.aero/">Get started right away!</a></p>
<h4>A new (temporary) game world every 4 months</h4>
<p>For the first time ever, we now have two temporary game worlds in parallel: <a href="http://quimby.airlinesim.aero/">Quimby</a> and Otto. The idea is that each of them will run for 8 months and then be reset. This happens with a 4 month offset, so anyone who likes to run airlines with a green field approach has the opportunity to do so every 4 months.</p>
<p>Additional temporary game worlds might launch in the future, for example to test new features under real-world conditions but before rolling them out to all game worlds. These would typically run for shorter periods of time.</p>
<h4>What about open-ended game worlds?</h4>
<p>The traditional AirlineSim game world is an open-ended one and that is not going to change. As such, there will definitely be more such game worlds in the future. But looking at the rather low player numbers of our legacy game worlds we figured that we cannot afford to open too many of them in short succession. The next one is most likely going to arrive with our next major new feature which is to be announced at this year’s <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/events/2016/LEJ">AirlineSim Convention in Leipzig</a>. So stay tuned!</p>AirlineSim Convention Leipzig 20162016-06-10T16:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-06-10:blog/2016/06/10/airlinesim-convention-lej-2016/<p>Our annual convention tends to be the most important AirlineSim event of the year. And it's no different in 2016: After several years (!) of planning and many months of development behind closed doors, we will finally be able to reveal what we have been working on since 2015! We kindly invite you to join us for this event on <strong>September the 24th in Leipzig</strong>, Germany.</p>
<p>As always, we have some exciting activities planned for before and after the presentation, including a unique night visit to DHL's European air cargo hub. You can find all the information about the event, including hotel recommendations, a detailed program and sign-up instructions, on our <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/events/2016/LEJ">special event page</a>.</p>
<p>We are looking forward to seeing you in Leipzig!</p>User Advisory Board: Elections now open!2016-05-31T11:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-05-31:blog/2016/05/31/uab-elections-may-2016/<p>The May 2016 elections to the User Advisory Board are now open! You have until Sunday, June the 5th, to cast your vote <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/9860-elections-to-the-uab-in-may-2016/">in this thread</a>. You can find the intros of all candidates <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/9771-elections-in-may-2016-candidates-wanted/">here</a>.</p>Update 6.3-962016-05-17T09:10:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-05-17:blog/2016/05/17/update-v6.3-96/<p>This is a long overdue maintenance patch which fixes various bugs and adds a few minor changes and improvements. Two things are worth mentioning, though: </p>
<ol>
<li>We changed how the valuation of companies works. We now take into account the actual company value of subsidiaries and held shares. This way it should be impossible in the future to move multi-billion airlines between accounts by selling them as a subsidiary of a shell company that's still at it's initial book value (typically 10 million). Revaluation happens at every week-end closing of a company, so it might take a few weeks until all the corrected values have "bubbled up" to holding level.</li>
<li>When installing a new cabin configurations, you are now only charged the difference based on the types and amount of seats you install. So for example, if you only change the amount/type of seats in business class but leave economy class untouched, you will only be charged for the difference in business class. The economy seats are "re-used". We see this as a temporary measure until we implement a more sophisticated system that allows for actual depreciation and storage of seats.</li>
</ol>
<p>All changes in this patch:</p>
<ul>
<li>NEW: Current cabin configuration is displayed in aircraft view</li>
<li>NEW: Cabin configuration can be installed from aircraft view</li>
<li>CHANGE: Unrealized gains and losses from held shares are taken into account for company valuation</li>
<li>CHANGE: Loan contract payments start one week after delivery of aircraft</li>
<li>CHANGE: Seats are reused when new cabin configuration is installed and seat type hasn't changed</li>
<li>CHANGE: Companies will always be granted rescue loans independent of financial situation</li>
<li>CHANGE: Display tail number in load monitoring</li>
<li>CHANGE: Added a safety checkbox to terminal construction form</li>
<li>BUGFIX: In some cases it was possible to access fleets of foreign enterprises if the ID was known</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Fix integer overflow in calculation of airline image</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Don't allow asset transfers between companies that have a running IPO</li>
<li>BUGFIX: "Ready for departure" time estimate was off by a few minutes in some cases</li>
</ul>User Advisory Board: New members wanted!2016-05-12T09:30:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-05-12:blog/2016/05/12/uab-candidates-may-2016/<p>We have opened the application phase for the May 2016 User Advisory Board elections. Applications are possible until Tuesday, May 23. The actual election will follow right after that and will run for seven days.</p>
<p><strong>What does the User Advisory Board do?</strong></p>
<p>The UAB acts as the voice of the community in AirlineSim. Members can bring important topics from the players to the AirlineSim team. They can give their feedback on changing game rules or game features. And members decide on treatment / punishment of cheating cases in AirlineSim</p>
<p>Have a look at the respective thread in our forums to submit your application: <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/9771-elections-in-may-2016-candidates-wanted">http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/9771-elections-in-may-2016-candidates-wanted</a></p>AirlineSim goes to Toulouse!2016-03-11T09:40:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-03-11:blog/2016/03/11/toulouse-2016/<p>After we haven't had any official community events all through 2015 we are very happy to say that we'll have a full event schedule again this year! And to get things started, please let me invite you to our <strong>International Meet-Up in Toulouse on June the 25th</strong>!</p>
<p>Naturally, a tour of the Airbus factory will be a major part of the event. After that, we'll visit the beautiful town of Toulouse and have (probably excellent) French food and drinks. The perfect opportunity to chat with team members and fellow players!</p>
<p>Find all the details, including hotel recommendations, entry fees and information on how to sign up on our event page: <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/events/2016/TLS">www.airlinesim.aero/events/2016/TLS</a></p>
<p>We're looking forward to meeting you in Toulouse!</p>Update 6.3-66 and Quimby data patch2016-03-10T08:55:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-03-10:blog/2016/03/10/update-v6.3-66/<p>Today we finally rollout the long anticipated patch that brings all existing game worlds up to the same data level as the recently launched Quimby IV. Most importantly, this includes the new A320neo and several other new aircraft types. </p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2016/03/01/quimby-IV-launch/">as mentioned before</a>, the parameters of about 150 aircraft types have been adjusted as well. Most of these changes will only affect your existing fleets and their schedules when you plan new flights or update existing ones. Any flights scheduled right now will continue to operate with their current performance values. </p>
<p>If you want to know which airports have been adjusted as part of the data patch, you can refer to <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/files/2016-03-01_Quimby-IV-data-changelog.pdf">this PDF</a>.</p>
<p>Once again, a big shoutout to the community members that have invested countless hours of their spare time to make this upgrade possible!</p>Quimby IV is now open with new aircraft data2016-03-01T11:30:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-03-01:blog/2016/03/01/quimby-IV-launch/<p>As previously announced, the fourth iteration of our time-limited game world <em>Quimby</em> is open as of today! The configuration is pretty much the same as that of its predecessor: No used aircraft at start, regular slots, multiple holdings and rising demand over time. Since we are still hard at work on some major new features and our recent survey showed that you prefer long running times over short ones, we decided to leave the new Quimby open for 8 months this time. As such it will end on November the 1st. To get started, <a href="http://quimby.airlinesim.aero">head over to the new game world right here</a>.</p>
<h4>New aircraft data</h4>
<p>The launch of Quimby brings with it a huge batch of new and adjusted aircraft data. Most importantly, these new aircraft types are introduced:</p>
<ul>
<li>Airbus A320neo</li>
<li>Airbus A330-200/300E</li>
<li>Boeing 737 with scimitar winglets</li>
<li>Comac ARJ21-700</li>
<li>Embraer 175 (enhanced)</li>
</ul>
<p>Thanks to pleurotides for providing new sheer plans for the A320neo and the Comac ARJ21!</p>
<p>Beyond that, about 150 aircraft models have been adjusted, primarily to make fuel consumption values more accurate and to improve their relative performance compared to other models in their class. A big shout-out goes to <em>Matth</em>, <em>Spezialist</em> and several helpers from the community who invested countless hours to research and test the new data. Thanks a lot guys!</p>
<p>Note that after an initial testing period on Quimby, all these changes will be applied to existing game worlds as well.</p>
<h4>New and adjusted airport data</h4>
<p>We have also prepared an airport data patch based on your feedback and as part of ongoing data maintenance. You can find all the changes <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/files/2016-03-01_Quimby-IV-data-changelog.pdf">in this PDF</a>.</p>Quimby III has ended - final stats2016-02-16T10:00:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-02-16:blog/2016/02/16/quimby-III-has-ended/<p>As planned, the third run of the Quimby game world has come to an end yesterday. At only about three months, it was a rather short one, but it served its purpose very well: It gave you and us great insight into how the then new Dynamic Turnaround feature works in practice. </p>
<p>I have prepared a few high-scores of the top 100 airlines in their respective fields and put them on the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/forum/60-quimby-iii/">Quimby III board on the forums</a>. We'll keep this board around, so you can always come back to check out how you did.</p>
<p>Just a reminder: Quimby is scheduled to return on the 1st of March for its fourth run. We don't have any specifics yet as to what the configuration will look like, but it's very likely that it will run somewhat longer, probably around 6 months or so.</p>Quimby, A320NEO and other news2016-02-08T12:00:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-02-08:blog/2016/02/08/quimby-A320neo-and-other-news/<p>As mentioned before, we held our annual team meeting last week-end and as usual, we discussed a broad array of topics ranging from big stuff like our development roadmap all the way to tiny things like whether we should have a new chat system or not. In this post I want to give you a quick overview of and (where possible) a rough timeline for our plans.</p>
<h4>Development Roadmap and Feature Survey</h4>
<p>I still can't tell you what exactly we're working on. All I can tell you at this point in time is that the rough idea is to release the <em>secret feature</em> some time later this year but that there isn't any specific date. It's a big and very complex topic and we don't want to rush anything. For this reason <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2016/01/22/feature-survey/">we asked for your opinion</a> on which features we could or should add or improve in the meantime whenever we find the time for "something smaller". The turnout of our little survey was amazing! We received a lot more input than we had hoped for and we're still busy wading through it. As soon as we have a structured result ready, we'll let you know!</p>
<h4>A320NEO and companions</h4>
<p>One thing that popped up quite a few times in the responses to our survey was the request for new aircraft models. Work on the A320NEO is mostly complete and research for its sister models and other new types like the CS100 is in progress. We are currently holding back the release of the A320NEO because we want to adjust some of the performance parameters of the existing A320-family models to get a dataset that's more coherent overall. This shouldn't take too much longer though, so stay tuned!</p>
<h4>The fate (and return) of Quimby</h4>
<p>The current instance of Quimby is about to end in a week's time. Although this isn't the first time-limited game world we've run, we received more requests than usual to keep it open for a bit longer. I'm sorry to say that we can't do this and that Quimby III will end as planned on the 15th. But don't fret: We decided to restart it very shortly after. So mark your calendars: Quimby IV will launch on March the 1st! More details on this will follow as soon as they are available.</p>
<h4>AirlineSim Events 2016</h4>
<p>In 2015 we were so busy working on AirlineSim that we didn't find the time to organize our traditional community events. We don't want this to happen again and we are already busy finding interesting locations and things to do for our 2016 events. So hopefully we'll all the important information ready over the next few weeks so you can start planning ahead!</p>
<h4>Support and User Advisory Board</h4>
<p>We don't keep the fact a secret that our support processes leave some room for improvement. We discussed this a lot last week-end and we have a long list of things that we want to change to become better at them. Many of these changes are actually technical in nature and are supposed to make the internal processes and workflows easier for our small support team. Obviously, implementing them will cut into our time budget for development work, but we're confident that it will be time well-spent and that our turnaround times in support and cheating cases will go down dramatically.</p>
<p>On a related note, we would also like to breath new life into the User Advisory Board with new elections coming up this spring. All important information on this, including deadlines, will follow in a separate post as soon as possible.</p>How can we improve AirlineSim?2016-01-22T11:20:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-01-22:blog/2016/01/22/feature-survey/<p>In about two weeks we will hold our annual AirlineSim team meeting. We'll lock ourselves in a conference room for two days to discuss, plan and schedule the work we want to tackle over the next 6 to 12 months. This year, this planning session will be dominated by a single large feature complex that has been on the drawing board for several years now and will finally get realized this year. </p>
<p>Because completing this feature will take relatively long and there won't be much to show while we work on it, so we want to address smaller issues in parallel. The question is: What should we focus on? Which features need to get a rework the most? Where could small changes lead to big improvements?</p>
<p>To figure out the answers to these questions, we've set up a tiny survey with three simple questions. If you have a few minutes to spare, we kindly ask you to let us know your opinion. You can find the survey <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1eC5Hj3xD4E3G7TDLg55SJGwzmrQ75uf-a5M-EikSQxE/viewform">HERE</a>. Thank you very much for you help!</p>Update 6.3-452016-01-13T08:30:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2016-01-13:blog/2016/01/13/update-v6.3-45/<p>Our first maintenance patch of the year brings two smaller changes that are mostly relevant for Quimby:</p>
<ol>
<li>The formula for catering times was unintuitive for small amounts of catering: In some cases, loading more catering would in fact reduce the catering times because more "catering trucks" were used. Now, the catering time rises linearly with the amount of catering that needs to be loaded.</li>
<li>The maintenance times are a bit more flexible now: Instead of always using the maximum time available based on the schedule of an aircraft, the revised formula will use at least the minimum maintenance time of two hours and at most the actual available time (in case of delays). This way, maintenance serves as a buffer against delays to some extend, but keep in mind that this means that an aircraft might not get the full amount of maintenance it needs.</li>
</ol>
<p>This release also brings a whole bunch of improvements for the French and Spanish translations of the game. Thanks to danielba and fklotz for that!</p>This was 2015, see you in 20162015-12-18T15:30:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-12-18:blog/2015/12/18/this-was-2015/<p>I don't know about you, but to me it feels like this year went by incredibly fast. Then again, a lot of things happened in 2015: We didn't just release one but two major new versions this year, with AirlineSim 6.2 introducing a completely new interface and 6.3 adding Dynamic Turnaround Times. So by all means, 2015 was a meaningful and quite successful year for AirlineSim. </p>
<p>To make sure 2016 won't disappoint in comparison, we already have great new things in the pipeline that we'll talk more about next year. But first, we will take a few days off to spend some quality time with friends and family over the holidays. We will of course keep a watchful eye on our servers the whole time and there will always be someone taking care of emergencies. Our support channels will stay open as usual as well, but please expect an occasional peak in our response times around the turn of the year.</p>
<p>Speaking of response times: If you happen to have sent an email to our support address over the past few weeks and months, it might have happened that a response arrived late or even not at all. We want to apologize for this and let you know that we are currently adding more staff and revising our customer support processes to make sure this won't happen again in the future. We have screened our inboxes and most of you should have heard back from us by now. In case you are still waiting for a response to an inquiry you have sent us more than one week ago, please kindly send us a quick reminder so we can look into the matter as soon as possible.</p>
<p>On behalf of the whole AirlineSim team I want to wish you great holidays and a happy new year!</p>Update 6.3-34 and A350 data patch2015-12-08T09:40:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-12-08:blog/2015/12/08/update-v6.3-34/<p>At last, we're rolling out the long-awaited A350 to all game worlds today. It took us a lot longer than originally intended, but some technical issues were holding us back. Other than the fix for these issues and the data patch, today's update does not introduce any visible changes. After the patch, all game worlds will have the same data level as the most recent game world <a href="http://quimby.airlinesim.aero/">Quimby</a>. As usual, should you come across any issues, please let us know.</p>Update 6.3-292015-11-30T10:19:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-11-30:blog/2015/11/30/update-v6.3-29/<p>AirlineSim 6.3 has been running all our game worlds for a few weeks now. Most feedback we received so far had to do with how we changed the display of the visual flight plan since in existing game worlds, that's the most visible change there is. We have taken this feedback to heart and this update will introduce a first batch of adjustments. More will probably follow in the future as we receive more input on <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/">our forums</a> or through our <a href="mailto:support@airlinesim.aero">email support channels</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>CHANGE*: Visual Flight Plan: Higher contrast for location label.</li>
<li>CHANGE*: Visual Flight Plan: Make background color of hour headers alternate (light/classic theme).</li>
<li>CHANGE: Visual Flight Plan: Don't show airline code in flight numbers of short flights.</li>
<li>CHANGE: Visual Flight Plan: Display full location code and earliest ready time on hover.</li>
<li>CHANGE: Improved rating/demand images (courtesy of partim).</li>
<li>BUGFIX*: Visual Flight Plan: Ensure hover menu is not obstructed by following flights.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Convertible aircraft did not show up as such in legacy game worlds that have not received data patch yet.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: MPL warning icon on aircraft type page was broken.</li>
<li>BUGFIX*: Scrollbar in Microsoft Edge would cover parts of the content.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Important:</strong> All items marked with a * will only become effective after a hard browser refresh.</p>Update 6.3-16 for all game worlds2015-11-10T14:48:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-11-10:blog/2015/11/10/update-v6.3-16/<p>This is the first maintenance release for AirlineSim 6.3. There aren't many visible changes in this upgrade (see change-log below), but as <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/11/09/6.3-rollout/">mentioned before</a> it brings the new version to all game worlds for first time. Should you encounter any issues, please let us know at <a href="mailto:support@airlinesim.aero">support@airlinesim.aero</a>.</p>
<ul>
<li>CHANGE: Do not display static turnaround times in performance tool when dynamic turnaround times are active.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Selecting an aircraft type to filter the list of leased out aircraft would cause an internal server error.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Connectivity issues affecting the blog could slow down game worlds when loading latest news.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Attempt to solve an issue that would cause instancing of flight plans with large gaps to stop.</li>
</ul>Roll-out of AirlineSim 6.3 to all game worlds this week2015-11-09T12:00:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-11-09:blog/2015/11/09/6.3-rollout/<p>AirlineSim 6.3, the new version that has introduced Delays and Dynamic Turnaround Times to the game, has now been running in the Quimby game world for a few weeks. We're happy to say that it works as expected and that the issues encountered and reported by players so far are minor ones. Obviously, further tuning and balancing of the single turnaround activities will continue, but in terms of technology, we deem 6.3 to be ready for a general roll-out to all game worlds.</p>
<p>This roll-out will take place this week after we've addressed a few of the issues mentioned above. Once again I want to stress that the <strong>dynamic part</strong> of the new feature will <strong>not be active in existing game worlds</strong>. The most important change you will be able to see will be the somewhat different rendering of the visual flight plan. You do not have to worry about your schedules being broken after the upgrade has been applied. The only way you will be able to cause delays in existing game worlds is by deliberately scheduling overlaps in your flight plans.</p>
<p>Whether and when the dynamic part will be enabled in legacy game worlds has yet to be decided. A lively discussion about this is taking place on our <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/">forums</a>, but our official stand at this time is that the earliest we would activate the dynamic features would be once we have modeled all turnaround activities with final formulas (right now, some activities like cabin cleaning are basically placeholders). And even once this criteria is met, we will most likely leave the decision to the affected players (by means of a poll in the respective game worlds) and, when in doubt, would generally lean towards maintaining the status quo instead of messing up airlines that might have taken players years to build up.</p>AirlineSim 6.3 released, Quimby game world launched2015-10-15T14:30:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-10-15:blog/2015/10/15/6.3-release/<p>As previously announced, we've launched the latest version of AirlineSim today. The first game world to run AirlineSim 6.3 is (again) called Quimby. So if you just want to start playing right away, simply <a href="http://quimby.airlinesim.aero">head over there</a> now. Otherwise, you can find our official press release below.
</p>
<h4>Press Release</h4>
<p>Today, the browser-based aviation management game AirlineSim launches a new version which introduces Dynamic Turnaround Times, replacing a static model that has been in use for more than a decade.</p>
<p>The turnaround time is the time it takes to get an aircraft ready for departure after it has arrived at the gate. In reality, this performance indicator makes the difference between a sluggish legacy carrier or an agile low-cost airline. Up to now, this time was static in AirlineSim, severely limiting the ability of players to build differentiated operational models. </p>
<p>With today’s release, turnaround times depend on a wide range of factors - like catering and actual passenger count - most of which can be influenced by the player. Martin Simons, founder and developer of AirlineSim, says: "It has been bothering us for years that AirlineSim effectively only allowed for a single operational model and I'm very happy to say that we've finally resolved this weakness, adding a great amount of depth to the game.".</p>
<p>The new features are first available in the new game world Quimby which has been launched in parallel with the new release of AirlineSim.</p>
<h4>Screenhots</h4>
<p><img alt="View of turnaround activities" src="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/images/2015-10-15-turnaround-activities.png" title="View of turnaround activities." /></p>
<p><img alt="Overhauled visual flight plan" src="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/images/2015-10-15-flight-planning.png" title="Overhauled visual flight plan." /></p>
<h4>Additional Sources</h4>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/04/11/dynamic-turnaround-delays/">Initial announcement of the Dynamic Turnaround Times feature</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/10/13/6.3-dynamic-turnarounds-video/">Video introduction to AirlineSim 6.3</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/10/14/6.3-faq/">AirlineSim 6.3 FAQ</a></li>
<li><a href="http://press.simulogics.net">simulogics/AirlineSim Press Kit</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/files/2015-10-15_6.3-data-changelog.pdf">Data Changes in this release</a></li>
</ul>AirlineSim 6.3 FAQ - all you need to know2015-10-14T10:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-10-14:blog/2015/10/14/6.3-faq/<p>Just one more day until AirlineSim 6.3 launches along-side a new game world. This post will try to answer all the questions you might have concerning the new version, what will happen to legacy servers and what you can expect of the new game world. If we missed something, let us know!</p>
<h4>AirlineSim 6.3 and Dynamic Turnaround Times</h4>
<p><strong>What are "Dynamic Turnaround Times"?</strong></p>
<p>As the name suggests, this feature makes the turnaround times that are currently a static part of the flight time a separate item in the flight plan of an aircraft. To read more about it, have a look at the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/04/11/dynamic-turnaround-delays/">initial announcement</a> or watch the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/10/13/6.3-dynamic-turnarounds-video/">video introduction</a> we released yesterday.</p>
<p><strong>How can the turnaround times be influenced?</strong></p>
<p>At release you will be able to influence the turnaround times using these settings/factors:</p>
<ul>
<li>Amount of seats you install.</li>
<li>Size of airport you operate from/to.</li>
<li>Amount of on-board service you provide.</li>
<li>Boarding method (remote stand or boarding bridges)</li>
<li>Cargo policy (accept none, only in containers etc.)</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>What other influencing factors are planned for the future?</strong></p>
<p>Right now, some influencing factors are static or based on simple standard formulas. We intend to eventually replace those with better models that can be influenced by the user. For example, there will be settings concerning cabin cleaning, the amount of baggage passengers may check in, the amount of boarding bridges owned terminals provide and many more. If you have a good idea for other factors, let us know!</p>
<p><strong>Will the new systems cause delays of my flights?</strong></p>
<p>The initial version will only cause delays in two ways:</p>
<ol>
<li>If you deliberately cause overlaps in your flight plan.</li>
<li>Flight times have a minimal fluctuation built in that will sometimes add or subtract a few minutes for random noise.</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Will there be more sources of delays in the future?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, the plan is that any turnaround activity can be the cause of delays, especially when they are on the critical path. These delays will be semi-random, which means that we intend to make the probability of delays dependent on factors the user can influence at least to some extend. And example would be "staff mood": If your staff mood is low, chances for delays are increased. Note that we will add these factors one by one over time, probably with the introduction of new or the rework of existing features.</p>
<p><strong>How can I deal with delays?</strong></p>
<p>You can't, at least not directly. AirlineSim is a strategic-tactical game, so we do not want users to be doing "operations". Delays will be dealt with by the system, and so will cancellations due to excessive delays. This happens with the systems already in place, like automatic transfer flights to avoid cascading cancellations.</p>
<p><strong>How can delays be avoided or minimized?</strong></p>
<p>The best way to avoid delays is to leave some buffer in your flight plan. Long-time players will be able to judge from experience how much free time to leave in a flight plan to be safe.</p>
<p><strong>Where can I see whether flights are delayed?</strong></p>
<p>The list of flights of an aircraft shows you the planned and expected arrival and departure times, including information about any delays and their sources.</p>
<p><strong>What's the effect of delays?</strong></p>
<p>Minimal delays have no effect other than that they might accumulate over time when your flight plan is built very tightly. Longer delays will cause image and monetary penalties. Excessive delays will cause the cancellation of the affected flight. In the future, we plan to make your historic on-time performance a dedicated component of your airline's image.</p>
<p><strong>The turnaround of my narrow-body takes extremely long. Why?</strong></p>
<p>Narrow-bodies usually only have a bulk cargo compartment and - on short flights - might have a lot of "spare payload" available. By default, this payload will be used to accept cargo which is very slow to load in bulk. So check your cargo preference settings for the affected routes/flights.</p>
<p><strong>Can I set airline-wide default cargo and boarding preferences?</strong>
Yes, in your airline's settings you can define which boarding and cargo preferences should be set by default when a new flight or airport pair is created. As with all the other custom settings, these will be inherited by subsidiaries unless overridden.</p>
<p><strong>The new cargo capacities look way off! Why?</strong> </p>
<p>We did our best to get accurate data for the new cargo volumes of the aircraft types in the game. Since the values provided by aircraft manufacturers and other sources are not standardized, there will be cases in which our values are off. If you come across something that looks wrong to you and you can provide a better source, please let us know and we'll look into it.</p>
<h4>The new game world</h4>
<p><strong>What will the configuration be like?</strong></p>
<p>The new game world will launch with a standard configuration. The only differences to other game worlds will be that no used/out-of-production aircraft will be available and that it will employ a slightly adjusted formula for standard prices.</p>
<p><strong>How long will it run?</strong></p>
<p>Since we will use it to launch a new feature for the very first time, the new game world will run for 4 months.</p>
<p><strong>Will there be a persistent game world again soon?</strong></p>
<p>Once we feel like 6.3 is working as expected and all the formulas and parameters have stabilized, we will launch a new persistent game world eventually. Right now it is too early to set or even announce a date for this, though.</p>
<h4>AirlineSim 6.3 and legacy game worlds</h4>
<p><strong>Will AirlineSim 6.3 be installed in existing game worlds?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, all legacy game worlds will be updated to version 6.3 some time after tomorrows launch as soon as we're sure there are no fundamental teething issues.</p>
<p><strong>This is a disaster! How am I supposed to adjust my airline?</strong></p>
<p>Don't worry: Technically, the legacy game worlds will run version 6.3, but all the turnaround times will a.) remain static and b.) be exactly the same as they are right now. The random flight time fluctuations mentioned above also won't be active in existing game worlds. So nothing will change for your airline. Just be careful not to cause overlaps in your flight plans: This will be possible with the new system and will, of course, cause delays (see above).</p>
<p><strong>Will the system be switched to "dynamic mode" eventually?</strong></p>
<p>It depends. Once we feel like 6.3 is working as expected, we might leave the decision about whether to update legacy game worlds to "dynamic mode" to the affected players, for example by doing game world-specific polls. But nothing has been decided yet and when in doubt, we'd rather stick with the old system as to not destroy existing airlines.</p>
<p><strong>Will legacy game worlds continue to receive updates?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, absolutely. Dynamic Turnaround times are designed to be a configuration option, so all game worlds will be running the same software and all will receive the same patches in the future.</p>A video introduction to AirlineSim 6.32015-10-13T14:20:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-10-13:blog/2015/10/13/6.3-dynamic-turnarounds-video/<p>You’ve probably read quite a bit about AirlineSim 6.3 and the new Dynamic Turnaround feature already, but besides a few screenshots there wasn’t much to actually <em>see</em> of it so far. So to shorten the wait for <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/10/12/6.3-launch-announcement/">the launch on Thursday</a> a bit, I sat down this morning to give you all a brief introduction to the new feature in video form. The video doesn’t go into all the details (while still clocking in at almost 18 minutes for some reason) but it should give you a fair overview of how the feature works and how you can use it to you advantage. </p>
<p>So here we go! I recommend you watch it in fullscreen and/or on YouTube for better visibility of the details in the visual flight plan:</p>
<iframe width="633" height="356" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/kAMoTz6HdcU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>AirlineSim 6.3 will be released this Thursday2015-10-12T12:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-10-12:blog/2015/10/12/6.3-launch-announcement/<p>It’s been a long time in the making, but we’re finally ready to announce the release date of the upcoming AirlineSim version 6.3: This Thursday, the <strong>15th of October 2015</strong>, you will be able to experiment with the new Dynamic Turnaround Times for the first time. As you might expect, you will be able to do so in a brand-new game world to launch on the same day. More information on the new version and game world will follow over the course of this week, so make sure to keep an eye on this blog! </p>
<p>If you haven’t heard of the Dynamic Turnaround Times feature yet, you can read up on it <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/04/11/dynamic-turnaround-delays/">here</a> (initial announcement) or <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/08/21/wip-dynamic-turnaround-times/">here</a> (more recent update).</p>Update 6.2-1352015-10-01T09:30:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-10-01:blog/2015/10/01/update-v6.2-135/<p>New month, new maintenance patch! We fixed a whole bunch of smaller issues and implemented some of the suggestions you’ve sent in over the past months. Note that some of the changes still need to be properly translated and will show up in English even if you’ve selected another language. This will be addressed once AirlineSim 6.3 has been released. The changes and bugfixes in this release are:</p>
<ul>
<li>CHANGE: Airline signatures now use new logo</li>
<li>CHANGE: Links to naming conventions and traffic right info on the „new enterprise“ page now open in new tab</li>
<li>CHANGE: The labels for pilot re-training have been cleaned up</li>
<li>CHANGE: „Send Interlining Request“ link on airline page now hidden for your own airline</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Slot usage would not take curfews into account</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Staff from interlining contracts would be ignored if airline has no flights</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Naming/sorting issue in service profile choices</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Rounding issues in flight costing</li>
<li>BUGFIX: AS-specific IATA airport codes with single digit would not work in quick-lookups</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Wrong text when withdrawing pilots from aircraft</li>
</ul>Work in progress: Dynamic Turnaround Times2015-08-21T16:54:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-08-21:blog/2015/08/21/wip-dynamic-turnaround-times/<p>As I started to write this post, I was a bit shocked when I realized that the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/04/11/dynamic-turnaround-delays/">initial post</a> announcing the Dynamic Turnaround and Delays (DTA) feature was written more than 4 months ago. So it’s about time for a status update and an explanation as to what in the world is taking us so long!</p>
<p>But first, a quick summary what this feature is all about: Firstly, after we added Speed Overrides and Departure Offsets, this feature will allow for even more flexibility in scheduling because overlaps will cause delays instead of rendering your whole flight plan impossible to operate. And secondly, the dynamic turnaround times are calculated based on a large number of parameters, most of which can be directly or indirectly influenced by the player. This opens all new possibilities to create different airline types and operational models.</p>
<p>The basic system has been working for several months now. What was and is taking us so long is modeling the individual turnaround activities. We worked with very simple, generalized formulas in the beginning but quickly realized that some things simply cannot be addressed like this. So we had to do something I originally tried to avoid: Research additional data specific to each aircraft type. For example, we now have more detailed information in our database on what kind of cargo compartments a certain aircraft type has, how many doors can be used for boarding using jetways or what the refueling rate is.</p>
<p>This adds a lot of depth to the DTA feature, but as you might have guessed, it also adds a lot of extra work to our to-do list. We’ve only now more or less finalized the new data structures and will commence the next iteration of tuning and testing shortly. Once we are confident that our current model works as intended we will commence full-scale data research for all the aircraft types in our database.</p>
<p>In the meantime, we will also continue to polish the new look of the visual flight plan as well as improve the presentation of the turnaround activities to make them as easy to understand as possible.</p>
<p>To get this feature shipped as quickly as possible, we are reducing the „random fluctuations and delays“ part to a minimum for now and I intend to add on these things once the first early-access game world has launched with the DTA.</p>
<p>That’s it for this update...back to work!</p>Update 6.2-123 or „The pilot flood“2015-08-17T13:33:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-08-17:blog/2015/08/17/update-v6.2-123/<p>Some of you were wondering why huge amounts of pilots were suddenly showing up on the job market. This was due to a tiny bug introduced in the last upgrade and has now been fixed. To get everything back to normal, today’s patch also took all pilots off the market again.</p>
<p>In other news, work on our next big feature continues. I’ll try to write a short dev-log about it soon.</p>Update 6.2-1222015-07-28T14:49:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-07-28:blog/2015/07/28/update-v6.2-122/<p>It’s been a while since we rolled out our last maintenance patch. As usual, this one also consists mostly of bugfixes and minor changes. The past weeks have been quite sluggish in general as we’ve been working on other projects a lot, including the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/07/14/infrastructure_upgrades/">recent adjustments to our backend and portal systems</a>. Either way, work on <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/04/11/dynamic-turnaround-delays/">Dynamic Turnaround Times and Delays</a> will continue this week and we hope to have further news about this soon.</p>
<ul>
<li>CHANGE: Cheating prevention: Pilots will only be added to global pool when liquidated company can afford their compensation</li>
<li>CHANGE: Center route maps on hub when no routes exist</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Wrong percentage calculation for EBITDA, EBIT, EBT</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Missing price slider/fields in inventory</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Flight time rounding in performance tool different from scheduling</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Pilot re-training possible without cash balance check</li>
<li>INTERNAL: Remove Jabber/XMPP dependencies</li>
</ul>Infrastructure upgrades this week2015-07-14T09:40:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-07-14:blog/2015/07/14/infrastructure_upgrades/<p>We are working on two necessary infrastructure upgrades this week that might cause a few temporary downtimes. Please keep an eye on <a href="https://twitter.com/airlinesim">our Twitter account</a> where we’ll post about our progress and any unexpected problems or delays. Find all details below.
</p>
<h4>Switch to different messaging backend</h4>
<p>Last week we had some troubles involving <em>all</em> game worlds that would halt their background updates. Two game worlds where struggling with this even several days later due to unexpected ripple effects. The reason was an old piece of messaging software that we use in the background to let our game worlds communicate with the central account management systems. Since this was not the first time this software has caused problems like this, I decided that this single point of failure needs to go. All our central systems and the game itself have been rewritten to use an alternative, distributed system. This way I hope to avoid anything like what happened last week in the future. For the upgrade to happen, all game worlds and the central account management systems (login, payment etc.) will be offline for a few minutes. This will probably happen today.</p>
<h4>New hardware for portal, forums and wikis</h4>
<p>Our portal pages, web forums and wikis still run on hardware that has been installed all the way back when we started AirlineSim as a commercial project. So this box is anywhere between 6 and 8 years old and well overdue for replacement. Therefore all portal services will move to new hardware over the course of the week. We’ll try to keep disturbances to a minimum but expect short downtimes every now and then.</p>You can now buy credits using Bitcoin2015-07-10T10:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-07-10:blog/2015/07/10/bitcoin/<p>Not everyone has a credit card and in many countries, credit cards are the only way to use PayPal. So for a large percentage of the world’s population, the two most common payment methods are not an option. And if none of our other, quite Europe-centric payment options is available in your country, you’re out of luck.</p>
<p>For this reason I’ve added a new payment method today: <em>Bitcoin</em>. If you’ve never heard of it, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin">Wikipedia has you covered</a>. In short, it is a decentralized, cryptographic currency. And because it is more or less unregulated in most parts of the world, it is truly international. Chances are that wherever you are, someone or some company trades Bitcoin for your local currency and using local payment methods. This way, you can buy Bitcoin and then use it to pay for your AirlineSim credits.</p>
<p>Of course I haven’t built the whole integration of the Bitcoin network into our systems myself. We’re using <a href="https://www.coinbase.com">Coinbase</a> as our payment provider. They also offer an online Wallet that you can use to get started with Bitcoin yourself, but you don’t have to use it. Coinbase works with any Wallet out there.</p>
<p>I see this new payment method as experiment for now, both technically as well as commercially. If you come across any problems or have questions concerning Bitcoin and the way we integrate it, just let us know at <a href="mailto:support@airlinesim.aero">support@airlinesim.aero</a>.</p>Update 6.2-1062015-06-22T17:35:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-06-22:blog/2015/06/22/update-v6.2-106/<p>This small upgrade mostly adds another batch of new aircraft sheer plans. At this point I’d like to take the opportunity to thank the small team of people who’ve been voluntarily providing these awesome, high-quality images for years now. In my opinion, they add a lot to make the otherwise rather dry and abstract AirlineSim a bit more „tangible“, if you know what I mean. The original sheer plans in the „current“ style were created by CarlosSRD. Later on, helios provided many missing images. Most recently, pleurotides joined the ranks and is currently filling remaining gaps with own creations and modifications of existing material. Thanks a lot guys :)</p>
<ul>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plans AN-24/26/32</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan AN-38</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan AN-140</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plans AN-74/AN-74 Convertible</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan AN-124</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plans AVIC II / Xian Y-7 family</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plans AVIC II / Xian MA-60/MA-600</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan PZL/AN-28</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Round deck utilization up to one decimal in cabin editor to avoid „invalid at exactly 100%“ problems</li>
<li>BUGFIX*: Classic theme: Links in headers now displayed in white for better contrast</li>
</ul>
<p>* Might require a hard refresh in your browser to become effective/work correctly.</p>Update 6.2-98 and data patch including A3502015-06-11T16:46:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-06-11:blog/2015/06/11/update-v6.2-98/<p>My vacation is over and we’re back at work. While I cannot present any huge changes yet, today’s upgrade brings some tiny improvements, lots of new aircraft sheer plans and - most importantly - an aircraft data patch that adds the long awaited A350-900 to the game. As usual, find the full list of changes below.</p>
<h4>6.2-98 Changes</h4>
<ul>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plans A319/A32X enhanced (thanks to pleurotides)</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan An-158 (thanks to pleurotides)</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan A350-900 (thanks to pleurotides)</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan B777-200F (thanks to pleurotides)</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan B787-9 (thanks to pleurotides)</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plans PC-12 family (thanks to pleurotides)</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plans Tu-204 family (thanks to helios)</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plans Tu-214 family (thanks to helios)</li>
<li>NEW: Aircraft sheer plan Yak-40 (thanks to pleurotides)</li>
<li>CHANGE: Display 3-letter airport codes in aircraft flight list.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Flight instancing sometimes stopped for aircraft with very irregular flight plans.</li>
<li>INTERNAL: Check for master data changes on every server start-up</li>
</ul>
<h4>Data Changes</h4>
<ul>
<li>NEW: Airbus A350-900XWB</li>
<li>NEW: Xian MA-600/MA-600F</li>
<li>NEW: Bombardier DHC-8-Q400 NextGen, 86 seats possible now</li>
<li>CHANGE: Pilatus PC-12 - runway length updated</li>
<li>CHANGE: Airbus A300-600R PAX-versions - not convertible</li>
</ul>No Ukash payments after 28th June2015-06-02T00:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-06-02:blog/2015/06/02/ukash-phase-out/<p>Only few of our users actually use the Ukash prepaid payment method we provide, but if you are one of these few, please be informed that we will phase out Ukash payments by the 28th of June. If you still have a valid Ukash voucher and you would like to use it for AirlineSim, please do so before this date.</p>
<p>The reason for the phase-out is that Ukash will become a part of paysafecard, another prepaid payment option you can use with AirlineSim. To our understanding, paysafecard will be available wherever you were previously able to purchase Ukash vouchers. For details, please refer to the official websites of either <a href="http://www.ukash.com">Ukash</a> or <a href="http://www.paysafecard.com">paysafecard</a>. </p>Update 6.2-90 and dev break in May2015-05-07T00:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-05-07:blog/2015/05/07/update-v6.2-90/<p>This tiny patch merely fixes a small issue affecting logo uploads: Several players reported that they were unable to upload their large company logos but did not receive any error message. This should now have been resolved.</p>
<p>In other news, I will be on vacation from tomorrow until the end of May which means that active development of AirlineSim will have to take a break as well. As usual, Sascha and our team of voluntary supporters will ensure that your queries by email or on the forums will be answered and that any technical issues that might come up will be addressed. Also, work on concepts for upcoming features is going on behind the scenes and will continue in my absence. </p>
<p>See you in June and stay tuned!</p>Update 6.2-872015-04-29T00:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-04-29:blog/2015/04/29/update-v6.2-87/<p>So far, this week has been a pretty hectic one for me, with appointments, conference calls and meetings all over the place. Since this made it more or less impossible to work on a single topic for an extended period of time, I tried to make the best of it and squeezed in a few hours of work on AirlineSim every here and there, getting rid of several smaller items that had accumulated in my backlog over time. Most of these are usability improvements suggested by community members. Here’s the full list of changes:</p>
<ul>
<li>NEW: Direct link to flight number from slot view</li>
<li>NEW: Load filter in Inventory</li>
<li>NEW: Link to aircraft from asset management when not leased out/on offer</li>
<li>NEW: Sorting and filtering of station listing on airport page</li>
<li>CHANGE: Availability left- or right-aligned in Market Analysis based on carrier (competitor or own) </li>
<li>BUGFIX: Number overflow in terminal construction tool</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Integer overflow affecting all-time transport statistics of enterprises</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Deadlink in French translation of several IGMs (thanks fklotz)</li>
</ul>Update 6.2-722015-04-22T00:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-04-22:blog/2015/04/22/update-v6.2-72/<p>This is mostly a maintenance release. A noteworthy change is the removal of a traffic rights bug that would allow airlines to transport passengers between countries of a treaty and non-treaty countries even when the origin country was not their own. Also, you can now filter by payload in the Connection Analyzer, which should come in handy for cargo airlines. Find a detailed list of all changes below.
</p>
<ul>
<li>NEW: Payload filters in Connection Analyzer</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Certain multi-leg connections from within treaty areas sometimes had too liberal traffic rights.</li>
<li>BUGFIX*: Content of contract popup in fleet management was hard to read in classic theme.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Page that displays when accessing premium content without premium account would sometimes cause an error.</li>
<li>INTERNAL: Removal of old data structures for routes which became obsolete after switch to airport pairs.</li>
</ul>
<p>* Might require a hard refresh in your browser to become effective/work correctly.</p>Dynamic Turnaround Times and Delays2015-04-11T00:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-04-11:blog/2015/04/11/dynamic-turnaround-delays/<p>As you know, AirlineSim 6.2 has introduced <em>Speed Overrides</em> and <em>Departure Offsets</em>. Their primary purpose is to allow for easier scheduling of regular flights at slot-congested airports and to permit easier up- or downgrades of aircraft types without changing the schedule. But there’s an obvious problem with this: Although flight times can remain unchanged now, turnaround times are still a big issue with the current <em>absolute</em> planning model. If the changed turnaround times overlap with other items on the flight plan, the plan cannot be executed. Even if it’s just a minute of overlap. But there’s a solution to this problem: <em>Dynamic Turnaround Times and Delays</em>.
</p>
<h4>The current model: Static Turnaround Times</h4>
<p>Currently, turnaround times in AirlineSim are taken from a simple matrix that holds a static time value for each combination of aircraft and airport size in the game. This is an easy solution, but makes no sense at all: Just imagine the (slightly constructed) example of one Boeing 747 configured at maximum capacity of 660 passengers and another one as a VIP aircraft with only 10 seats. Both aircraft would have exactly the same turnaround time because the <em>size</em> of the aircraft is the same in both cases. </p>
<p>A similar, more important issue with this static model is the fact that similar aircraft types might fall into different size categories. So even though type B only allows for 20 additional seats compared to type A, the turnaround time might differ by half an hour. This means that you cannot simply switch type A to type B because it would most likely mess up your schedule.</p>
<p>Last but not least, the turnaround is an important part of what makes the difference between a „Ryanair“ and a „Lufthansa“: The amount of baggage to load, the kind of cleaning and catering to be done, the number of doors used for boarding or the seat density on the plane all determine how long the turnaround will take and what kind of utilization you can achieve. Neither of these things is currently modeled in AirlineSim.</p>
<h4>The new model: Dynamic Turnaround Times</h4>
<p>Our new model for turnaround times changes this: Every turnaround will be a sequence of interdependent activities. Each of these activities has a duration that is influenced by the conditions under which the involved flights take place. The total duration of a turnaround will be determined by the so-called <em>critical path</em>: The sequence of successive activities that takes the longest to complete (the activities marked in orange in the picture below).</p>
<p><img alt="View of turnaround activities" src="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/images/2015-04-11-turnaround-activities.png" title="View of turnaround activities." /></p>
<p>This means several things:</p>
<ol>
<li>Differences between aircraft types are now secondary. What matters are the actual seating or cargo capacity of an aircraft. Upgrading to a slightly larger model will not cause the massiv differences you’d see today.</li>
<li>It provides an almost unlimited amount of ways to influence the duration of each and every turnaround activity. For example, instead of using a gate with jetways you might decide to use a remote stand, allowing you to use two doors for boarding and de-boarding instead of one. You could decide to never accept cargo on your flights so you don’t have to worry about this step during turnaround. Similarly, granting your passengers less checked baggage reduces the amount of bags that need to be hauled into and out of the cargo hold, again shortening the respective turnaround activity.</li>
<li>It allows the game worlds to become more dynamic: When an airport grows over time or becomes more congested, certain activities might take longer than they used to. Want short taxi times? Better don’t use a large international airport!</li>
</ol>
<h4>Why delays?</h4>
<p>So what have delays to do with all this? As mentioned before, one of the primary goals of the variable turnaround times is to allow for more flexible flight planning. But even though turnaround times make a lot more sense now, overlaps can of course still happen. So instead of simply marking a flight plan with overlaps as „inoperable“, the flights will be booked into the ORS as scheduled. </p>
<p>Once the flights are operated, the <em>actual</em> turnaround time required between the flight to take off and the previous flight is calculated. This turnaround time will take into account the <em>actual</em> conditions at the time. If the load factor of a flight is only 70%, chances are that boarding will be completed faster than planned. If the previous flight happened to arrive a few minutes earlier, this gives you some buffer to compensate random delays during turnaround or a short time window.</p>
<p>But obviously, it can also go the other way: Due to random factors, flight times or turnaround activities might take longer than initially planned. If you did not leave any buffers in your flight plan or even accepted overlaps, your aircraft will probably accumulate delays over the day. Depending on their severity, these delays will cause monetary and image penalties and might even lead to flight cancellations at some point, for example when maximum delay times are exceeded. Besides being quite realistic, this should prevent the misuse of the more flexible turnaround system. If you don’t leave any buffers or deliberately cause overlaps in your flight plans to reach maximum utilizations, delays will come and get you. If you plan ahead or only accept minimal overlaps due to a changing environment, you’ll probably be fine. In the newly adjusted flight plan view, overlaps will be indicated by respective markers (see picture).</p>
<p><img alt="Overlap markers in new flight plan view" src="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/images/2015-04-11-flight-plan-overlaps.png" title="Overlap markers in new flight plan view." /></p>
<p>Note that one of our design goals is that delays will <em>not</em> require micro-management of your airline. Think of it this way: As the manager of an airline, you have certain tools at hand to influence the probability of delays, but your „operations“ will deal with them once they happen. In case of cancellations, automatic transfer flights will ensure that aircraft don’t get stuck.</p>
<h4>Our roadmap for AS 6.3</h4>
<p>As you might have guessed, AirlineSim 6.3 will be mostly comprised of the two features described above. We have most of the core functionality implemented and are currently working on the basic definitions for the various turnaround activities. Once that’s done, we will commence internal testing which will probably involve several iterations of adjustments and take a couple of weeks. Once we feel the feature is ready to launch, we’ll start a new game world in which the new features will be enabled from the start.</p>
<p>Note that the means of influencing the activities will be rather limited initially. Those will be added over time and as part of reworks of other features.</p>
<h4>Will this feature destroy existing airlines?</h4>
<p>In case you’ve been worried about the effects of this update on existing game worlds: All legacy game worlds will be patched with the new version, but all turnarounds will consist of a single dummy activity which simply uses the static turnaround times in use today. Random factors will stay disabled. This way you can only cause delays manually by planning overlaps in your flight plans but you will never be confronted with automatic changes, for example after installing a different cabin layout or changing catering options. At a later point, when the new system has matured, we might decide to introduce it in old game worlds. But that’s something we’ll decide when the time comes.</p>Update 6.2-582015-04-09T15:20:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-04-09:blog/2015/04/09/update-v6.2-58/<p>Two days ago we started <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/blog/2015/04/07/reunified-flight-ops/">a first performance trial</a> with a changed system for flight operations. After the initial tests with Nicosia and Pearls showed satisfactory results, we extended the test to Stapleton and Ellinikon yesterday. In these game worlds, which use different hardware, we also didn’t see any negative performance impact. As such, we have rolled out the change to all game worlds today. Should you encounter any problems concerning flight instancing or flight operations, or should the game feel slower for you than usual, please let us know.</p>Pre-release test of flight ops changes2015-04-07T11:30:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-04-07:blog/2015/04/07/reunified-flight-ops/<p>As most of you know, we’ve had some issues affecting flight instancing in several game worlds recently. While it’s hard to pin-point the exact cause of the problem, we’re pretty sure they are related to several hotfixes we applied over the course of the worst phases of last spring’s performance problems. We do have a first experimental patch ready, but since it affects core systems of the game, we decided to do a pre-release test involving two game worlds (Nicosia and Pearls) to make sure the changes do not cause other bugs and/or degrade performance. If you come across any issues after today’s patch, please let us know.
</p>
<p>Once the patch has been applied, flight operations and flight instancing will be unified. This allows us to use the more robust controller of the flight operations routine for flight instancing as well, which up to now used its own controller. This way we hope to get rid of the glitches we saw in some game worlds recently, sometimes causing flights not to get instanced for several hours. One noticeable side-effect will be that flight instancing happens a lot quicker than it used to. When you activate an aircraft’s flight plan, flights will be booked into the ORS after a few seconds or minutes already. It also means that aircraft will be updated a lot more often, which could have negative performance implications and which is the reason for our pre-release test. </p>
<p>Another motivation for this change is that we can really use the unified flight operations system for the next big feature we are working on right now for version 6.3: Variable turnaround times and delays. Some parts of this have already been completed and we hope to get the core parts finalized this week. Once that’s the case, there will probably be another dev-log.</p>All info in one place: Our new blog2015-03-13T18:58:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-03-13:blog/2015/03/13/new-airlinesim-blog/<p>Up to now it could be hard to stay up-to-date with all the news around AirlineSim: Although important news have always been posted to our portal page, smaller bits of information like reports about development, news about smaller patches and other things that didn’t make it onto the portal often got lost. This comes to an end today: Welcome to our new Blog in the new AirlineSim-Design!
</p>
<p>From now on all important information can be found on this blog, arranged into the three categories „News“, „Dev-Log“ and „Change-Log“. Cross-posts to the forums will be a thing of the past. To ensure that you will never miss an item ever again, we have integrated a function directly into game that alerts you whenever a post exists on the blog.</p>
<p>Another important feature of the new blog is the support of proper translations. Although we’re still working on a translation of the page itself, all content will be available in at least two languages in the future. Posts that exist in more than one language are linked to each other, so you can easily read the post in your preferred language and don’t have to search for the right version in a long forum post first.</p>
<p>Last but not least, we’ve added a new Disqus-based commenting feature and we hope that you will make plenty of use of it!</p>Update 6.2-532015-03-13T18:48:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-03-13:blog/2015/03/13/update-v6.2-53/<p>This is mostly a tiny maintenance patch except for the new news alert feature that will display a banner in-game
whenever new items exist on the blog.
</p>
<ul>
<li>NEW*: Display banner when unread items exist on blog.</li>
<li>CHANGE: Add more obvious link to switch game worlds.</li>
<li>BUGFIX: Fix wrong background color in new grouped view in market analysis.</li>
</ul>
<p>* Might require a hard refresh in your browser to become effective/work correctly.</p>AirlineSim 6.2 goes live with new game world Riem2015-03-02T12:20:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-03-02:blog/2015/03/02/airlinesim-6-2-goes-live-with-new-game-world-riem/<p>After many months of development we’re happy to announce that AirlineSim
6.2 has finally been released. And of course, there’s a <strong>new game
world</strong> to go along with it. Let us tell you all there is to know about
it:</p>
<p><strong>The Name</strong></p>
<p>Since AirlineSim 6.2 has been first announced in Munich, we think
<strong>Riem</strong> would be the ideal name for our new game world. If you don’t
care about all the other details, you can head there right away:
<a href="http://riem.airlinesim.aero">http://riem.airlinesim.aero</a></p>
<p><strong>The Configuration</strong></p>
<p>Riem is a “hard” game world: It has launched without any used aircraft
and with a dramatically reduced level of passenger demand. The demand
levels will be adjusted over time but will generally remain below those
of our existing game worlds.</p>
<p><strong>The Design</strong></p>
<p>AirlineSim has a new look. And by that we mean everything: The logo, the
colors, the website and of course the game itself. The interface now
works a lot better on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets while
the visuals of the game are reminiscent of legacy IT systems and convey
the new motto of AirlineSim: To be the airline simulation for pros!</p>
<p><strong>The Features</strong></p>
<p>The full list of new features that are part of version 6.2 is too long
for this post. But a few highlights are the new scheduling features like
speed overrides and departure offsets, the brand-new connection analyzer
and our completely overhauled system for terminal assignments. You can
find <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/8030-ende-airlinesim-62-this-is-new-airlinesim-62-das-ist-neu/">a comprehensive list of all additions
here</a>.</p>
<p>AirlineSim 6.2 is available on all game worlds today. If you want to
learn more about it, make sure to <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/7715-airlinesim-62-faq/">check the FAQs we have
collected</a>
over the course of the Early Access phase.</p>
<div>
</div>Release date for AirlineSim 6.22015-02-23T11:01:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2015-02-23:blog/2015/02/23/release-date-for-airlinesim-6-2/<p>We are finally able to present you with the final release date for
AirlineSim 6.2. The <strong>full roll-out</strong> to all game worlds will take place
on <strong>March the 2nd</strong>. Before that, we will upgrade the <strong>Idlewild</strong> game
world to 6.2 on <strong>Thursday the 26th</strong> to make sure that the upgrade of a
live world works flawlessly and to gather some more last-minute feedback
from players on a legacy game world that might not have given the new
version a try on Quimby.</p>
<p>If you have missed the news about 6.2 so far, check out our announcement
post
<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/2014/12/12/airlinesim-6-2-early-access-starts-on-15th-december/">here</a>.
You can also find FAQ and a change-log from the Early Access phase on
the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/forum/32-announcements-ank%C3%BCndigungen/">announcement
board</a>.</p>AirlineSim 6.2 Early Access Game World is online2014-12-15T15:25:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-12-15:blog/2014/12/15/451/<p>As announced previously, the Early Access game world for our new version
6.2 has just launched. It will run until 1st April 2015. Before you dive
into trying it out, please make sure to read the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/2014/12/12/airlinesim-6-2-early-access-starts-on-15th-december/">initial announcement
containing a list of the most important
changes</a>
as well as our <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/7715-airlinesim-62-early-access-faq/">FAQ on the
forums</a>
which hopefully answer the most pressing questions.</p>
<p>The game world is named Quimby, you can find it here:
<a href="http://quimby.airlinesim.aero">QUIMBY</a>.</p>AirlineSim 6.2: Early Access starts on 15th December2014-12-12T10:40:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-12-12:blog/2014/12/12/airlinesim-6-2-early-access-starts-on-15th-december/<p>In September we have announced a considerable amount of new features,
wrapped in a completely new mobile-ready UI. Quite some time has since
passed and we spent most of it polishing, refining and testing said
features. Although this work is not completely done yet, we think that
AirlineSim 6.2 is ready for "Early Access". This means we will be
launching a new game world on <strong>Monday, December the 15th</strong> that will
run the new version for about 3 months. This way, you will get something
new to play with over the holidays and we can gather a lot of real,
early feedback to prepare the game for a full-on release in early 2015.</p>
<p>Note that this game world comes with "limited warranty": Some minor
things still need to be smoothed out and it's very likely that you will
encounter bugs in a few places. In either case, we are very much looking
forward to your feedback.</p>
<p>As said, the list of new features is comprehensive. To give you a rough
overview of what you'll find in the new version on Monday, find a list
of the most important changes below. Before Monday we will also prepare
a FAQ containing answers to questions we expect to come up.</p>
<p><strong>Improved usability on mobile devices</strong></p>
<p>AirlineSim has received a completely new interface which improves
usability on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets considerably.
On small screens, the navigation menus collapse to a touch-friendly
version and content is automatically “stacked” as to make side-scrolling
a thing of the past. Of course, for a project of the size and scope of
AirlineSim, we cannot provide a perfect mobile experience for every
single page in the game, but the general usability will improve
substantially.</p>
<p><strong>Completely new look</strong></p>
<p>Also a part of the new interface is a new, darker look. It is to convey
the direction we want to take in AirlineSim’s development over the
coming years: The airline simulation for pros! Loosely modeled on the
design of professional software systems, the new design is also a lot
more modular and flexible, allowing us easier and faster integration of
new features and expansions in the future.</p>
<p><strong>Theme Support</strong></p>
<p>Since we’re sure that the dark themes won’t be everyone’s cup of tea,
the new version allows you to pick a different theme. Initially we will
offer a “dark” and a “light” theme, but further variations are a thing
we keep in the back of our heads.</p>
<p><strong>Adjusted Terminology and Navigation</strong></p>
<p>As part of the “professionalization” we are introducing a slightly
changed terminology: for example, “offices” become “stations, “route
management” will be replaced by a combination of “Scheduling” and
“Inventory”. The game’s navigational menus now more closely follow the
structure of real airlines and are divided into “Commercial”,
“Operations” and “Management”. The process of applying these adjustments
will be on-going and the new terminology will be used consistently
during future development and reworks.</p>
<p><strong>Quick Search on many pages</strong></p>
<p>In many locations around the game you can now find small context-aware
search forms right below the head of the page that allow you to quickly
navigate to certain items by entering a code or search term. This way,
you could for example enter an airport code on the stations management
screen and it will take you directly to the page of the respective
office, even if it doesn’t exist yet. A single extra click will suffice
to open the respective station.</p>
<p><strong>Scheduling: Departure Offsets and Speed Overrides</strong></p>
<p>A large step towards more flexible scheduling: To make better use of
slots and to standardize the flight plans of different aircraft types it
is now possible to separately adjust the departure times within a single
flight number for each day of the week. Additionally, you can vary the
cruise speed by up to 5% of the optimal cruise speed to shift the
arrival times.</p>
<p><strong>Scheduling without aircraft assignments</strong></p>
<p>If you’d like to plan your network while the respective equipment still
has to be ordered or delivered, you can do that now: Once you provide an
explicit cruise speed for a particular flight, you can schedule it
without assigning an actual aircraft. This becomes an especially
powerful tool in combination with the Connection Analyzer (see below).</p>
<p><strong>Simplified assignment of terminals</strong></p>
<p>Up to now it was necessary to explicitly assign a handling contract to a
flight. With several contracts per station and many stations this could
quickly become a tedious affair. This changes in the new version:
Already during scheduling you can assign any terminal to a flight - even
if you haven’t actually booked handling there yet. This assignment will
be valid no matter if or how many handling contracts exist for the given
terminal. The only important thing is that sufficient capacities have
been booked. Because if a terminal is assigned to a flight but the
weekly quota has been exhausted, this can cause cancellations in future
versions. It’s a lot easier for cargo: Here you can book capacities
airport-wide and independent of single terminals. Are they insufficient,
AirlineSim will take care of the handling.</p>
<p><strong>New planning tool #1: Bulk Terminal Assignments</strong></p>
<p>Terminal assignments become even easier with the respective tool on the
station page: With a few clicks you can shift many flights between
terminals at once. This way, you can quickly and easily react to load
variations or changing contractual relationships.</p>
<p><strong>New planning tool #2: Connection Analyzer</strong></p>
<p>Controlling the network is one of the most important tasks of an airline
manager. And yet, so far this has been tedious and a matter of luck in
AirlineSim. The new Connection Analyzer simplifies things: As part of
scheduling, you can display which flights could serve as potential
inbound or outbound connections for a particular flight number. A
variety of parameters allows to fine-tune the result and the connections
are sortable by several fields. For the first time, this tool grants an
actual advantage to alliances as it is possible to display connections
with alliance partners - even if you don’t have an interlining agreement
with them or the flights have not been unlocked yet!</p>
<p><strong>New planning tool #3: Route Evaluation</strong></p>
<p>Many features that were formerly a part of route management have been
rebuilt to work on an “airport pais basis”. To still get an overview of
potential routes and the respective traffic rights, an old acquaintance
finds its way back into the game: The route evaluation tool. Many years
ago, this was already a part of old versions of AirlineSim and offered a
range of information like aircraft recommendations for the selected
route and similar things. We might add this and other functionality in
the future and we’re looking for suggestions from the community.</p>
<p><strong>Redesigned Leasing Management</strong></p>
<p>With several hundred leased (or leased out) aircraft the old leasing
page would often become close to unusable. For this reason it has been
rebuilt from the ground up and offers a sortable and pageable listing of
the contracts as well as filtering by aircraft type and lessee.</p>
<p><strong>Consolidated Finance</strong></p>
<p>Various pages of the finance part of the game have been consolidated
into two pages: Accounting and “Corporate Finance”. On the former you
can find your bank statement, balance sheet and income statement. On the
latter, equity and loans are managed.</p>
<p><strong>Service Profiles: One-click save</strong></p>
<p>Small stuff matters, too: Up to now you had to separately save the food
and non-food settins of a service profile. Now this can be done in a
single step.</p>
<p><strong>Embedded Help System (content not completed yet)</strong></p>
<p>If you click on the small help symbols located around the game you can
view the documentation for the respective features without leaving the
game for the wiki or other external pages. The documentation will open
in an embedded window and even allows to jump to related topics without
switching pages.</p>AirlineSim Winter Meetup 2014 in Vienna2014-09-23T08:32:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-09-23:blog/2014/09/23/airlinesim-winter-meetup-2014-in-vienna/<p>The AirlineSim Convention lies behind us and it’s time to prepare for
our next event. This year, our annual winter meetup will take place in
Vienna, Austria. This is not the first time we’re hosting this event in
Vienna: We already went there 6 years ago and are happy to return in
2014.</p>
<p>We will meet at Vienna Airport on Saturday, the 20th of December, at
around 10:00 to 11:00. A more precise time and location will be fixed
once we have a more definite guest list. We will again start the program
with one or two aviation-related visits around the airport (details to
follow), will then head downtown for the classic sightseeing and
Christmas market tour and will finally end the day at an Austrian
restaurant for some authentic food and drinks.</p>
<p>As it is always the case for our winter meetups, the aviation part of
the event is both minimal as well as interesting to “non-fans”. As such
it’s the perfect event to bring your family and friends. After all, who
wouldn’t want to visit Vienna in Winter?</p>
<p>Our hotel recommendations:</p>
<p><a href="http://rainer.schick-hotels.com/" title="Externer Link">http://rainer.schick-hotels.com</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.hotelpapageno.at/" title="Externer Link">http://www.hotelpapageno.at</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.wombats-hostels.com/vienna/">http://www.wombats-hostels.com/vienna/</a></p>"Compensation Week" and new game world2014-08-04T09:58:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-08-04:blog/2014/08/04/compensation-week-and-new-game-world/<p>We are aware of the fact that playing AirlineSim hasn't been an
unconditionally enjoyable experience lately, with performance problems
plaguing the game for many weeks. We would like to apologize for any
inconvenience this might have caused and thank you for sticking with us
anyhow. For this reasons we will - starting today - switch off credit
consumption for all game worlds until next Friday. This means,
AirlineSim will essentially be free to play for 5 days.</p>
<div>
To mark the occasion we have decided to launch a new game world as well.
Named Ellinikon after the former airport of Athens, Greece, it offers a
"classic configuration" with used aircraft available from the beginning
and the possibility to run more than one holding per account. You can
find the new game world [HERE](http://ellinikon.airlinesim.aero/).
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
Anyone who plays AirlineSim for the first time this week and wants to
upgrade to a premium account or if you want to buy credits despite the
disabled credit consumption, make sure to enter the voucher
code FREEWEEK14 during your purchase. It add 30 free credits and is
valid until Friday the 8th of August.
</div>AirlineSim 6.1: Schedule Transfer Tool and Automated Transfer Flights2014-06-30T12:30:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-06-30:blog/2014/06/30/airlinesim-6-1-schedule-transfer-tool-and-automated-transfer-flights/<p>Today we launch a new version of AirlineSim that introduces two new
features: A tool that allows quick and easy transfer of aircraft flight
plans from one aircraft to another and automated transfer flights. To
learn more about these additions to the game, make sure to watch the
video below and to check out the FAQ we added to the end of this post.</p>
<iframe src="//www.youtube.com/embed/1LH0ZVzG5zU" frameborder="0" width="439" height="247"></iframe>
<p><strong>Why do flights appear red in scheduling even though they have been
unlocked?</strong></p>
<p>Red flights are invalid, that is, due to missing slots, overlapping
flights or for technical reasons the aircraft is unable to operate this
flight. To find out why a flight is invalid, click the "calendar" icon
in your schedule view - "set planner to this flight number".</p>
<p><strong>Why are some invalid flights booked in and others are not?</strong></p>
<p>Flights are not booked in if they are invalid for any reason (see
above). An exception are incomplete flight plans: Flights are also
marked as invalid when the schedule is inconsistent. But since you could
fix this using manual or automated transfer flights, they will still be
booked in.</p>
<p><strong>What happens to my slots in case of an invalid schedule?</strong></p>
<p>Slots will not be blocked for any flight marked as invalid. You have to
ensure a flight is valid before slots are allocated again. In case of
overlapping flights, this is the case for both involved flights. So even
if only the second flight would have to be moved a bit to make the
schedule valid again, no slots will be allocated for the first first
flight.</p>
<p><strong>What are automated transfer flights?</strong></p>
<p>After booking your flights into the reservation system the system checks
whether the first flight in the queue starts at the current location of
the aircraft. If not, it will automatically schedule a transfer flight
to this airport. You can still schedule transfer flights manually but
keep in mind that - as today - only one transfer flight can exist per
aircraft at any time.</p>
<p><strong>Do I have to take turn-around times into account when dealing with
transfer flights?</strong></p>
<p>The system doesn't treat transfer flights as regular flights. There
won't be any checks for range slots or turn-around times. The only thing
that counts is that the flight arrives at its destination before the
next flight will take off.</p>
<p><strong>My aircraft has been grounded due to low condition - but no
maintenance takes place and no transfer flight has been scheduled.</strong></p>
<p>Maintenance is calculated by the system whenever a flight takes off and
only at the airport the aircraft is currently located at. If the next
flight takes off from another airport, no maintenance will take place.
At the same time, automated transfer flights are only scheduled when the
condition of the aircraft allows flight operations. You can resolve this
situation by scheduling a transfer flight manually.</p>AS Convention 2014: Sign up now!2014-04-07T16:25:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-04-07:blog/2014/04/07/as-convention-2014-sign-up-now/<p>The annual AirlineSim Convention will take place on <strong>13th September
2014</strong> at <strong>Munich Airport</strong>.</p>
<p>Highlights of this year's convention will most certainly be the visit to
the local LSG catering facilities as well as the "airline style" lunch
afterwards.</p>
<p>All the details, including the complete program, driving instructions,
hotel recommendations etc. can be found on our special event
page: <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/muc14/en/">http://www.airlinesim.aero/muc14/en/</a></p>
<p>We are looking forward to meeting you in Munich!</p>New game world: "Quimby" launches2014-04-01T18:46:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-04-01:blog/2014/04/01/new-game-world-quimby-launches/<p>Instead of an April Fools joke, there’s some real news for you this
year!</p>
<p>Today, we launch our first “Beginner’s Game World” called
<strong><a href="http://quimby.airlinesim.aero">Quimby</a></strong> - time-limited, but with a
higher degree of freedom, thus allowing you to try something new or
different that might be impossible to pull off in our regular game
worlds. This means twice the amount of slots, no nighttime bans or noise
restrictions and all aircraft available for order.</p>
<p>With this new game world, we also roll out a large upgrade. The main
visible change is new standard prices which now follow individual
formulas for each class. But it also includes a huge amount of code
changes “under the hood” from the spring cleaning already mentioned in
the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/6334-spring-cleaning-ii-the-core-fr%C3%BChjahrsputz-teil-2-der-kern/">development
logbook</a>.
While these changes are intended to improve the stability and
performance of the game and lay the groundwork for future developments,
we will test them for the first time on Quimby and expect some initial
teething problems. Should you come across any problems or bugs, please
let us know using the usual support channels. Once we’re confident that
the system performs as expected, we will apply the patch to all other
game worlds as well.</p>
<p>Last but not least, we have also prepared a small data patch that mainly
corrects prices for old aircraft types. Find all data changes here:
<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/datapatch/Data-Patch_2014_2.pdf">http://en.airlinesim.aero/datapatch/Data-Patch_2014_2.pdf</a></p>New prices and game world starting 1st April2014-03-21T11:53:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-03-21:blog/2014/03/21/new-prices-and-game-world-starting-1st-april/<p>For 3.5 years now, prices for AirlineSim have remained constant. However
AirlineSim is probably the most complex online airline simulation game
out there, with above-average hardware requirements and high development
costs for the kind of niche game that it is. We also try to keep legacy
game worlds running indefinitely and launch new ones on a regular basis.
For these reasons we cannot avoid a price increase. So effective 1st
April 2014, the following prices for credits will apply:</p>
<ul>
<li>50 Credits: 1,80€</li>
<li>100 Credits: 3,60€</li>
<li>250 Credits: 8,60€</li>
<li>500 Credits: 16,60€</li>
<li>1000 Credits: 31,70€</li>
<li>2000 Credits: 62,40€</li>
</ul>
<p>We want to thank you very much for your understanding and hope you’ll
stick with the game anyway. We don’t like increasing prices, but there’s
no way around it if we want to keep AirlineSim running and improving the
way it does now.</p>
<p>But there’s good news, too. On the same date, we will launch our first
ever “Beginner’s Game World”! This game world is less restricted than
our standard game worlds, which means twice the amount of slots, no
restrictions on night time flying and the full range of aircraft—old and
new—available for order from the factory. The only catch: This game
world will have a predetermined end-of-life date. You will be able to
activate this game world until 1st October and it will be terminated on
1st December. Whether this termination will be a shutdown or a reset
depends on how well this concept is received. We see it as an experiment
to lower the entry barriers for new players. And don’t worry, we will of
course continue to launch regular, unlimited game worlds in the future.</p>
<p>And on a last note: Don’t forget that the current low prices are still
available throughout all of March!</p>Data Patch and Seating Corrections2014-02-19T11:10:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2014-02-19:blog/2014/02/19/data-patch-and-seating-corrections/<p>Airports, aircraft and seats … all new in 2014.</p>
<p>22 new airports in Canada and China have been added with the new data
patch, while another 192 airports received data updates.</p>
<p>Likewise, and after comprehensive discussions aided by some users - who
we’d explicitly like to thank again - the cabin dimensions for some
aircraft types have been fundamentally revised. The inconsistency
regarding the length of the “LieFlat 160” seat has also been corrected.
As before, cabin configurations can be replaced with full refund for old
configurations.</p>
<p>Also, several new subtypes like the Airbus Enhanced series for
A319-A231, winglets for 757 and 767 and the Saab 340A freighter are now
available. Note that only types that are currently produced will show up
in existing game worlds. Out-of-production types will be available as
used aircraft in future game worlds.</p>
<p>See this PDF for a detailed listing of all changes:
<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/files/Data-Patch_2014_1.pdf">http://en.airlinesim.aero/files/Data-Patch_2014_1.pdf</a></p>
<p>We wish you lots of fun with the new data and would like to thank all of
you, who supported us by reporting incorrect data!</p>
<p>If you come across missing or incorrect data in AirlineSim, please send
an e-mail to <a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;&#115;&#117;&#112;&#112;&#111;&#114;&#116;&#64;&#97;&#105;&#114;&#108;&#105;&#110;&#101;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#46;&#97;&#101;&#114;&#111;">&#115;&#117;&#112;&#112;&#111;&#114;&#116;&#64;&#97;&#105;&#114;&#108;&#105;&#110;&#101;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#46;&#97;&#101;&#114;&#111;</a>. We will review your report and
solve it within the next patches, when applicable.</p>
<div>
</div>Roll-Out of Aspern Features on Dec 17th2013-12-09T21:26:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-12-09:blog/2013/12/09/roll-out-of-aspern-features-on-dec-17th/<p>On <strong>December 17th 2013</strong>, most of the new features known from the
launch of Aspern will be implemented on all other game worlds.</p>
<p><strong>New Seating Editor</strong></p>
<p>Finally, the new graphical cabin editor will be introduced. Old
configurations will stay, but can no longer be created or applied. When
scrapping old seats, the value will be refunded. Please note, that seat
ratings are completely new and therefore the rating of your flights may
change! To anticipate the usage of more space for very attractive seats,
standard prices for business and first class have been raised. Please
prepare your airline for the rating changes by setting aside some cash,
allowing you to react to any booking fluctuations after the patch.</p>
<p><strong>Data Patch</strong></p>
<p>A lot of new airports have been added, airport data has been revised and
the demand for Europe has been updated. Have a look at <a href="http://www.simulogics.net/sk/datapatch2013/Data-Patch_2013-Fixes_Patches.pdf">the
PDF</a>
for all changes.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.simulogics.net/sk/datapatch2013/Data-Patch_2013-New_Airports.pdf">This
PDF</a>
lists all new airports.</p>
<p>As for aircraft, some new ones have been added while some older models
are no longer produced. For some aircraft types, buggy fuel burn figures
have been adjusted. If you operate these types, this may lead to higher
costs and to slightly changed performance parameters! Find all affected
types <a href="http://www.simulogics.net/sk/datapatch2013/Data-Patch_2013-Aircraft.pdf">in this
PDF</a>.</p>Aspern has launched2013-11-26T13:51:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-11-26:blog/2013/11/26/aspern-has-launched/<p>Our 12th game world has just launched. In our long-standing tradition of
naming our game worlds after airports from aviation history, it is named
<strong>Aspern</strong> after the former airport of Vienna.</p>
<p><a href="http://aspern.airlinesim.aero/">Head here to start up a new airline.</a></p>
<p>All the details about the game world and its configuration can be found
<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/2013/11/25/new-game-world-to-launch-on-november-26th/">in this previous
post</a>.</p>New game world to launch on November 26th2013-11-25T15:23:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-11-25:blog/2013/11/25/new-game-world-to-launch-on-november-26th/<p>Finally, we have a date: Our 12th game world will be launched officially
on November 26th 2013. As always, the exact launch time will only be
announced on the same day, so keep an eye on our Twitter or Facebook
accounts. The new game world will feature several improvements and a
slightly different configuration. These are the details:</p>
<p><strong>New cabin editor</strong></p>
<p>The new game world will be the first opportunity to try out <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/2013/10/10/new-cabin-editor-new-game-world-new-project/">the new
cabin
editor</a>.
We estimate to be able to roll it out to the existing game worlds in two
weeks time, when we can be sure of not having overlooked any teething
problems.</p>
<p><strong>Immediate Delivery Program</strong></p>
<p>Another innovation that will also be applied on existing game worlds is
the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/5332-immediate-delivery-program/#entry41578">Immediate Delivery
Program</a>.
Up to a certain price total it will allow newly founded airlines to
receive their first aircraft without delay. This shall speed up
bootstrapping your airline by avoiding long waiting times for aircraft
deliveries or at the aircraft market. That way, resets will also be less
painful.</p>
<p><strong>New formula for landing fees</strong></p>
<p>For now only on the new game world we will be testing a new formula for
landing fees. It will depend on the size of both airports on a certain
route as well as the aircraft size and shall prevent small and very
small aircraft from being scheduled on routes between large airports by
rendering them less attractive financially. The formula might be
adjusted within the first weeks on the new game world. If and how it
might be applied on existing game worlds has yet to be decided on.</p>
<p><strong>Special configuration: No used aircraft</strong></p>
<p>The new game world will drastically differ from all game worlds that
have been launched so far in one aspect: It will start completely empty.
This means there will be no used aircraft available after the launch.
You will have to order all aircraft directly from the manufacturers, so
there will be only modern aircraft that are still in production at the
moment. The aircraft market will become more important over time, when
the first aircraft from liquidations are for sale.</p>
<p><strong>Data Improvements</strong></p>
<p>We constantly work on improving and maintaining our core data, that is,
our airports, aircraft etc. As such, tomorrow’s game world launch will
also include a big batch of updates. Highlights include over 500 updates
to the airport data, 95 new airports and the Antonov An-158 as an
additional aircraft type.</p>New Cabin Editor, new Game World, new Project2013-10-10T07:52:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-10-10:blog/2013/10/10/new-cabin-editor-new-game-world-new-project/<p>The AirlineSim Convention 2013 is over. Even though this year it is
possible for the first time to <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/5129-ende-airlinesim-convention-2013-videos/">watch the most important keynotes on
YouTube</a>,
it’s about time to spread the relevant news to all those who were unable
to make it to Frankfurt.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">New Cabin Editor<span style="font-size: 13px;"> </span></h3>
<p>After a rather long period without visible changes to AS there is
finally a new feature around the corner that has been built from the
ground up. As the caption suggests we’re talking about a complete
overhaul of the cabin editor that brings plenty of improvements over its
predecessor.</p>
<p>Among these are a visual representation of the seating layouts, an
extended choice of seat models, support for aircraft with more than one
deck and a revised handling of seat pitch and cabin staff. Furthermore,
configurations now remain editable as long as they are not assigned to
any aircraft, the amount of flight attendants can always be changed and
you can create configurations for aircraft types that are not part of
your fleet yet.</p>
<p>The editor is backward compatible in that your existing configurations
remain assigned. The only limitation is that those configurations cannot
be newly assigned anymore.</p>
<p>The feature is mostly finished and is currently undergoing final testing
and translation. As such we anticipate a release for the end of October
while that date could still shift to November depending on the test
results and the amount of tuning required.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">New Game World<span style="font-size: 13px;"> </span></h3>
<p>The release of the cabin editor will be preceded by a server launch.
Besides the new editor, the 12th game world will feature a new helper
for beginners (more on that in a future dev-log entry) and will probably
be the first game world to launch without any existing second-hand
aircraft. Other than that, the configuration will match that of other
recent game worlds. A precise date for the launch will be announced in
the near future.</p>
<h3 dir="ltr">New Project<span style="font-size: 13px;"> </span></h3>
<p>Also among the keynotes at the AirlineSim Convention was the
announcement of the latest browser-based game title made by simulogics:
The complex science-fiction business simulation game <a href="http://www.prosperousuniverse.net/">Prosperous
Universe</a>. It has been in
development for about a year now and will allow players to produce,
trade, and transport goods in a nearly closed economic cycle. The goal
is to rake in maximum profits of course, but every player can
essentially choose whatever style of playing he or she prefers.</p>
<p>The game is currently in a closed alpha stage. A first public beta
version is expected to arrive in late 2013 or early 2014. If you want to
stay up-to-date, just follow our <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ProsperousUniverse">Facebook
page</a> or the <a href="http://blog.prosperousuniverse.net/">development
blog</a>.</p>Update of the simulated world economic index AGEX2013-09-17T08:56:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-09-17:blog/2013/09/17/update-of-the-simulated-world-economic-index-agex/<p>In the second quarter of 2012 the AGEX was introduced, a randomly
generated purely virtual index, which is intended to reflect an
imaginary world economy in AirlineSim and affects the global passenger
and cargo traffic levels.</p>
<p>This feature has been discussed controversially on the forums and both
sides - opponents and supporters - have raised good arguments. We knew
that the introduction of such a dynamic component would not encounter
pure euphoria and we were aware that some players would leave AirlineSim
due to this change. But we consider the introduction of AGEX to be an
important and right decision that we do not want to undo.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, when examining the counter arguments raised during the
discussions, we realized that the AGEX in its present form leaves room
for improvement. The various possible optimizations and their
consequences have already been highlighted in the discussion on the
forums. As a first step, we have decided to change the scaling of the
AGEX: In the future, a decline of the index by 10% will not imply a
decrease by 10% in demand but less.</p>
<p>This update has been tested internally for some time and will be
installed on the game worlds soon. The demand levels in the game worlds
are likely to jump by a few points, although the index AGEX retains its
previous value. This is no error - it is an intended behavior.</p>
<p>The AGEX will also be an issue at the AirlineSim convention in
Frankfurt.</p>AirlineSim Convention 2013 in Frankfurt2013-08-18T14:11:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-08-18:blog/2013/08/18/airlinesim-convention-2013-in-frankfurt/<p>We are now able to present the program for the long-announced AirlineSim
Convention 2013 which will take place on September 28th and 29th in
Frankfurt, Germany. So if you want to know what happens where during the
two-day program, just head over to <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/4893-frankfurt-2013-program/">the
forums</a>.
We are looking forward to meeting you in person!</p>Welcome to the EU, Croatia!2013-07-01T12:14:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-07-01:blog/2013/07/01/welcome-to-the-eu-croatia/<p>From today, Croatia is the 28th member state of the European Union. This
change affects AirlineSim to that effect that the country is now also a
member of the EU Treaty in-game. This means that - within the boundaries
of the EU - any EU airline has full traffic rights in Croatia and any
Croatian airline has full traffic rights in the EU.</p>
<p>Beyond that mere formality we want to celebrate the admittance, of
course: When you buy credits within the next 24 hours, make sure to use
voucher code WELCOMECROATIA and you get <strong>30 free credits</strong> on top!</p>New interface for Credit Card payments2013-06-12T14:08:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-06-12:blog/2013/06/12/new-interface-for-credit-card-payments/<p>In this post we just want to let you know that we have launched a new
interface for credit card payments. It is now embedded directly into our
payment gateway so you will not be redirected to a 3rd party page
anymore. At the same time, we do not handle the credit card information
on our own servers but through a payment provider certified to the
highest standards, thereby ensuring a maximum security. Should you come
across any questions or issues, please contact us
at <a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;&#112;&#97;&#121;&#109;&#101;&#110;&#116;&#64;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#117;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#105;&#99;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#101;&#116;">&#112;&#97;&#121;&#109;&#101;&#110;&#116;&#64;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#117;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#105;&#99;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#101;&#116;</a>.</p>
<p>Right now the we support Visa and MasterCard payments but soon we will
also be able to accept American Express, Diners Club, Discovery, JCB and
Maestro cards.</p>
<p>In other news: We have adjusted the URL of our payment gateway from
secure.simulogics.net to secure.airlinesim.aero. So in case you use some
kind of password manager that seems to have "forgotten" your login
recently, make sure to adjust the address.</p>Updates to our Support Infrastructure2013-05-22T15:33:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-05-22:blog/2013/05/22/updates-to-our-support-infrastructure/<p>Ever since you could reach our support team in case of questions or
problems using the email address support@airlinesim.aero for English and
support@airlinesim.de for German support. Nothing will change about this
in the future. But the technology running in the background will: Over
the coming days it we will replace it by a completely new system. The
general way in which we deal with tickets won't change, but the new
system offers a bunch of new features, for example a support portal that
allows you to track the status of your tickets online.</p>
<p>The changes will be introduces bit by bit. The address for German
support has been the first to be upgraded, the others will follow
shortly. Please note that existing tickets will not be taken over to
the new system. If you have important open issues that haven't been
resolved yet, we recommend you send them in again. This only affects
current cases though. Bugs and suggestions you filed with us in the past
have of course been saved.</p>AirlineSim sister project launches with new game world2013-04-01T10:00:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-04-01:blog/2013/04/01/airlinesim-sister-project-launches-with-new-game-world/<p><span style="color: #ff9900;">UPDATE: This was of course an April Fool's
joke. We will leave the game world running until next Monday (April 8th)
but registrations are not possible anymore. The game world will not cost
any credits until it's switched off.</span></p>
<p>Many player suggestions and the desire for something new have led us to
the development of our latest game project: <strong>SpacelineSim</strong>. In
technical terms this is a total conversion of AirlineSim - the
successful formula of our flagship product is maintained while we
translate it into a refreshing space scenario. The airline simulation
has become a spaceflight simulation.</p>
<p>Due to the fictional setting a lot of “earthly problems” don’t apply:
For example no real airport or aircraft data had to be researched.
Instead you acquire spacecraft by various manufacturers and - in good
old AirlineSim tradition - connect the star systems of a future space
civilization. Each people on the starmap has its own history and
specific relationships with its neighboring territories causing the
individual traffic flows known and loved from the base game.</p>
<p>With the opening of the first SpacelineSim game world today, we write
forth the success story of AirlineSim and lay the foundation for a new
AirlineSim-based product family. The game world will carry the name
“Picard”, named both after the legendary dynasty of explorers and
adventurers as well as the fictional protagonist of one of the most
popular science fiction series in the world from that very line.</p>
<p>Should SpacelineSim meet the expected popularity with players we are
ready to add further modifications to AirlineSim. Several kinds of
transport simulation would be possible: From down-to-earth variants like
Shipping- and TrainSim to rather unusual settings like Submarine- or
BicycleSim.</p>
<p>But first, off to New Frontiers! The doors of the <strong>game world Picard</strong>
are open with immediate effect <a href="http://picard.airlinesim.aero">HERE</a>!</p>Gatow: 11 years, 11 game worlds2013-02-01T15:08:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-02-01:blog/2013/02/01/gatow-11-years-11-game-worlds/<p>This January AirlineSim was 11 years old and coincidentally, our new
game world started today is our 11th one. It is named after the former
British airport of Berlin, <strong>Gatow</strong>. As previously announced, this game
world runs a standard configuration just like Pearls and Meigs with a
limit of 1 holding per user.</p>
<p>It might be worth mentioning that this is the first launch with the new
Aircraft Market in place from the beginning. So it will be interesting
to see how prices of used aircraft will develop over the first weeks.
Will you use the rather expensive "immediate purchase" to make sure to
have plenty of capacity available directly at launch? Will you engage in
bid-wars over popular models? Or will you simply order brand-new metal
straight from the manufacturer, accepting the required delivery times?</p>
<p>Whichever strategy you choose, have fun in the <strong>Gatow</strong> game world! You
find it by clicking <a href="http://gatow.airlinesim.aero">HERE</a>.</p>New game world to launch February 1st2013-01-29T19:47:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2013-01-29:blog/2013/01/29/new-game-world-to-launch-february-1st/<p>We've been hard at work on <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/3829-airlinesim-in-an-alternative-era-airlinesim-in-einer-alternativen-ara/">very cool new
features</a>
lately. But since it will probably take a few more months until these
things are ready to ship, we decided to bridge the gap by launching a
new game world this coming Friday, February the 1st.</p>
<p>The game world will feature a standard configuration just like Meigs and
Pearls. So if you want to try out classic AirlineSim in a fresh empty
world, Friday's you chance to do so. We will most likely launch in the
late afternoon, Central European Time. If you don't want to miss the
event, make sure to check the website or - even better - our <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/chat/">chat
room</a>.</p>2012 on final approach - 2013 ready for take-off2012-12-24T11:19:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-12-24:blog/2012/12/24/2012-on-final-approach-2013-ready-for-take-off/<p>In just a few days, another year will come to an end for AirlineSim.
Time to look back and ahead a bit.</p>
<p>2012 was obviously all about the game’s 10th anniversary. While summer
was rather meager around AirlineSim’s headquarters, the birthday
celebrations on the sunny and warm island of Mallorca were - without a
doubt - the highlight of the year.</p>
<p>But there have been many more big and small news in 2012: With Meigs and
Pearls, two new game worlds “took to the skies”. New and interesting
features like the AGEX, a completely overhauled aircraft market and a
fully rebuilt fleet management tool were just the most important ones
introduces during the year. The complete rewrite of our unique ORS
finally put an end to our most annoying and long-lasting performance
issues. And last but not least, Chinese and Spanish are the latest
additions to our range of alternative languages offered.</p>
<p>Of course we plan on continuing on this path of continuous evolution and
extension throughout 2013. Everyone who’s joined us at the recent
AirlineSim Christmas meet-up in Stuttgart has already had the chance to
peek at what we’ve got in store for next year. Among the things planned
there is a whole group of features that will allow us to bring more
variety to the settings of new game worlds by allowing us to start them
in different eras.</p>
<p>But before we take on these challenges the team will be off to spend
some time with friends and family. As usual, we will guarantee basic
support in case of emergencies and we will keep an eye on our servers so
you can enjoy playing AirlineSim over the holidays.</p>
<p>We want to thank all supporters and partners that made running
AirlineSim possible throughout 2012 and we wish Happy Holidays and a
Happy New Year to all of our fans and players!</p>
<p>PS: If you want to spent more time with AirlineSim than with your
family, maybe this voucher is for you: On your next purchase, enter code
CHRISTMAS12 and get 30 free credits on top, valid until December 26th!</p>Removal of official leasing/financing for private aircraft offers2012-11-28T11:35:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-11-28:blog/2012/11/28/removal-of-official-leasingfinancing-for-private-aircraft-offers/<p>When we introduced the new aircraft market in August we also added a new
feature that was intended to stimulate the aircraft market and to
improve the pricing of used aircraft: When a player put an aircraft for
sale, potential buyers could not only pay in cash but also make use of
leasing and financing options offered by official AirlineSim companies.</p>
<p>Unfortunately and as it’s often the case, a group of players misused
this feature to their own benefit in a way that wasn’t intended.
Especially alliances used it to essentially print money for their
members.</p>
<p>For this reason this feature will be removed from the game with
immediate effect. We are not announcing this ahead of the implementation
to not give the ability to react to the players who made us remove the
feature in the first place.</p>
<p>Although we regret to once again remove a feature due to misuse, the
scale of the misuse and its negative effect on the game we saw ourselves
force to take this step. We are aware that this change will again punish
the players that stick to the rules and play fair. Nevertheless we have
to ask for your understanding for the decision we’ve made.</p>Dublin, Shirts and ORS2012-11-01T16:52:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-11-01:blog/2012/11/01/dublin-shirts-and-ors/<p><strong>International AirlineSim Meet-Up 2013 in Dublin</strong></p>
<p>For a few days the date for next year's international meet-up has been
set: On May 11th and 12th, team and fans will gather in the Irish
capital to discuss everything AirlineSim and to share one or the other
Guinness. If you wish to join, find all the details on the forums or on
our <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/dublin2013">special event site</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Only now: Get your AirlineSim gear!</strong></p>
<p>Due to regular requests we are offering the famous AirlineSim
polo-shirts with embroidered logo again. For the first time, sweat- and
fleece-shirts are also available. Please note that these shirts are
manufactured to request and can only be ordered for a limited time. The
deadline is November 11th, all details can be found on <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/3283-order-of-airlinesim-shirtsjackets/">this
thread</a>
on the forums.</p>
<p><strong>Development news: ORS rewrite</strong></p>
<p>Over the recent weeks, we've been working away quietly on a major
rewrite of one of AirlinSim's core features, namely the ORS. To give you
some insights into the "why" and "how", we've put together an elaborate
entry for our dev-log which can be found
<a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/3298-a-rewrite-for-the-ors-ein-rewrite-fur-das-ors">here</a>.</p>5 years ago today: Kaitak started2012-08-23T10:49:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-08-23:blog/2012/08/23/5-years-ago-today-kaitak-started/<p>Yep, that's half a decade! On August 23rd, 2007, our very first game
world based on the current major version of AirlineSim opened its gates.
The launch marked a beginning of a new era in AirlineSim's history: The
previously buggy and slow software was thrown out and replaced by a
completely new system, rebuilt from scratch, which serves as the the
foundation of the game as we know it today and which introduced probably
the most important core feature of AirlineSim to date: The ORS.</p>
<p>And yet, after so many years, countless updates and many ups and downs,
Kaitak is still going strong, with some of the airlines founded on the
first day still operating and striving. It's a testament to how stable
and mature AirlineSim has become over the last couple of years compared
to its early beginnings as a pure hobby project and we are determined to
further pursue this path.</p>
<p>We have big plans for the game and the evolution of the game will
continue feature by feature. But for now, let's celebrate a bit! If you
happen to buy credits today, use this voucher code to receive 30 free
credits on top:</p>
<p>5YEARSKAITAK</p>
<p>It's valid for a single purchase until tomorrow.</p>
<p>Oh, and speaking of celebrating: Don't forget to sign up for our
upcoming 10 year anniversary event on Mallorca! Find all the details
here:
<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/mallorca2012/">http://en.airlinesim.aero/mallorca2012</a></p>Introduction of the new aircraft market2012-08-01T09:23:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-08-01:blog/2012/08/01/introduction-of-the-new-aircraft-market/<p>Finally: The completely rewritten second-hand aircraft market will be
activated on all game worlds on <strong>Wednesday, August 8th</strong>. Since many
things will change due to this release, here the most important notes in
one place:</p>
<p><strong>Depreciation to zero</strong></p>
<p>One particular aspect of the new aircraft market is a clearer
distinction between book and market value. Consequently, aircraft won’t
be written off to an arbitrary minimum value but all the way to zero.
UPDATE: The value of existing aircraft written off to the current base
value of 15% will not be deprecated any further. This is to avoid sudden
irregular drops in value.</p>
<p><strong>Price according to supply and demand</strong></p>
<p>Contrary to how things worked so far, prices for used aircraft are set
according to supply and demand. Aircraft can be put on the market at a
starting price between 10% and 100% of the original purchase price.
After that, any player can place bids in fixed-size steps. The auction
ends as soon as no further bid arrives within one hour after the last
one. As such, an aircraft’s age only affects the pricing indirectly. The
only important factor will be how much players are willing to pay for a
particular aircraft.</p>
<p>Offers by official AirlineSim enterprises are always available for
immediate purchase. At 110% of the factory price an aircraft can be
purchased without bidding.</p>
<p><strong>Loans for everyone</strong></p>
<p>Another introduction is the distinction between buying and financing an
aircraft and that leasing and loans are available for used aircraft for
the first time. Loans for aircraft purchases - also for new aircraft -
are not tied to the rating anymore and as such are available to all
enterprises. Caution though: Whether loan financing makes sense depends
on the current interest rate and the initial interest payments -
especially for expensive aircraft - can be dangerously high. Therefore
we only recommend the use of loans to advanced players.</p>
<p><strong>Starting prices at introduction</strong></p>
<p>When the new aircraft market is introduced the official AirlineSim
companies will offer their aircraft at 75% of factory price. Over time -
when aircraft arrive from liquidations or are automatically bought -
offers will be placed at 100% of the value AirlineSim received its
aircraft at (UDDATE: Has been 75% before as well). For older or less
popular models the initial prices will consequently drop over time.</p>
<p><strong>Asset Transfer Tool</strong></p>
<p>Since there are strict rules in place concerning the permitted parties
of a transaction, no aircraft can be transferred between enterprises of
a single holding. To make up for this we added a tool that will allow
aircraft transfer within a single holding as soon as the new aircraft
market is introduced.</p>
<p><strong>Future Adjustments</strong></p>
<p>Since we are unable to predict precisely how the new market mechanisms
will work in practice, all mechanics and parameters are subject to
change. Especially if we discover cheating possibilities we haven’t
thought of so far it might become necessary to make adjustments.
Generally we will try to keep the amount of changes that might disturb
the running game to an absolute minimum.</p>
<p>If you have further questions or you come across problems after the
introduction, please refer to the forums or contact us at
support@airlinesim.aero.</p>July news round-up2012-07-12T14:08:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-07-12:blog/2012/07/12/july-news-round-up/<p><strong>New aircraft market inbound!</strong></p>
<p>The past few weeks we've been busy developing one of the first major
parts of our complete "aircraft system overhaul": A new second-hand
aircraft market, rebuilt from the ground up. We want to let you know
that this new feature has now been moved to "staging" which means it's
undergoing final testing and translation for an imminent release. Stay
tuned and make sure to follow our <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/forum/41-development-logbook/">development
log-book</a>
for up-to-date and in-detail information!</p>
<p><strong>AirlineSim drink-ups in Frankfurt and Zurich</strong></p>
<p>We've organized two drink-ups for Saturday, July 14th. If you feel like
meeting some AirlineSim devs and fellow players this week-end, here are
the details:</p>
<ul>
<li>Frankfurt: 11:00 at train station "Sportfeld" (from there we'll head
to the <a href="http://www.derwaldgeist.de/">Waldgeist</a> and the airport for
some spotting)</li>
<li>Zurich: <a href="http://www.linde-oberstrass.ch/">Linde Oberstrass</a>, 18:00</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Mallorca 2012: Don't forget to sign up!</strong></p>
<p>There are just about two months left until we meet on Mallorca to
celebrate AirlineSim's 10th anniversary! Make sure to book your
travels/accommodations and to sign up in time! You can find all the
details on our <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/mallorca2012/">special event
page</a>.</p>Pearls: 10 Years, 10 Game Worlds2012-06-04T23:23:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-06-04:blog/2012/06/04/pearls-10-years-10-game-worlds/<p>Surprise! Tonight we are happy to announce another historic milestone:
In AirlineSim’s 10th year of existence we are launching our overall 10th
game world! We are also rather thrilled by the reason for this launch:
Just weeks after the start of Meigs, both our youngest game worlds are
full to the last spot most of the time. Therefore we decided to bring up
another one to allow for a clean start on a fresh server for everyone.</p>
<p>Following our established tradition, the game world is of course named
after a former civilian airport. This time it’s “Pearls”, the first and
now defunct airport of the Caribbean island country of Grenada.</p>
<p>The configuration is identical to that of Meigs, so there’s a limit to
one holding per account. The only difference is the situation in Berlin
which has been adjusted to real-world circumstances: Instead of the new
Berlin Brandenburg airport, Pearls starts out with the existing
Schönefeld and Tegel airports which were supposed to be replaced by the
new BER this summer.</p>
<p>Find the new game world here: <a href="http://pearls.airlinesim.aero">http://pearls.airlinesim.aero</a></p>
<p>Have fun!</p>New Fleet Management is live2012-06-04T11:18:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-06-04:blog/2012/06/04/new-fleet-management-is-live/<p>We have just deployed the completely reworked Fleet Management feature
to all game worlds. To learn more about what has changes as part of this
overhaul, check out this entry in our development logbook: <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/2091-rework-fleet-management-uberarbeitung-der-flottenverwaltung/">Fleet
Management
Rework</a></p>
<p>Since this entry has been posted we have also added an inline display of
the current maintenance ratio which has been requested by a lot of
players recently. Please let us know how you like the new interface and
whether you have come across any issues.</p>
<p>Note: Make sure to refresh you browser once in case the interface looks
messed up.</p>Update of all game worlds to Meigs patch level2012-04-24T08:40:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-04-24:blog/2012/04/24/update-of-all-game-worlds-to-meigs-patch-level/<p>A brief overview of the most important information:</p>
<ul>
<li>Update of all game worlds to the "Meigs-level" patch will take place
on <strong>Wednesday, May 2nd</strong>.</li>
<li>Changes in demand may lead to varying booking levels!</li>
</ul>
<p>Now that the urgent performance problems with the game worlds Nicosia*
and Croydon have been resolved, we are ready to introduce the changes
made in the Meigs patch to the existing game worlds. The upgrade has
been scheduled for May 2nd 2012 and will contain several technical
changes and adjustments to the core data, as follows.</p>
<p>The successful adjustment of the traffic flow - ie through regions such
as the Hawaiian islands, Alaska, etc., but also demand for the so far
ignored Iraq -, as demonstrated on Meigs, will be applied to the
existing game worlds. The patch will also introduce the AGEX business
cycle index, which will introduce more dynamics into the game. Both
features will have an influence on the booking behaviour! It is
recommended to build up some cash reserves before the patch is applied,
in order to handle any possible negative developments. In addition, the
new credit guidelines will find their way to the existing game worlds.
They are designed to eliminate the leverage effect for recently founded
(new) companies.</p>
<p>The start of the Meigs game world saw the introduction of ArlineSim in
Chinese and we are happy to announce that there will also be a completed
French translation ready tol be rolled out to all existing game worlds
with the upgrade. At this point, we would like to thank all those who
volunteered for their hard work, making it possible to have AirlineSim
in five languages now. Despite the continuous growth, German and English
will remain the official languages used by AirlineSim as of now.</p>
<p>A few details regarding the data changes: Besides the introduction of
new aircraft types, such as the Antonov 148, ATR 42/72-600, Boeing 747-8
and 787-8, RUAG DO228NG and the Sukhoi Superjet, an adjustment will also
be made to some existing aircraft types in order to bring their fuel
consumption more in line with competing aircraft types. Specifically,
this concerns the Bombardier CRJ-1000 and the Embraer jets from the
EMB170-195 series.</p>
<p>In addition, the purchase price for some of the Boeing 777 types as well
as the Airbus A380 will be reduced, bringing them in line with
comparable aircraft from the same manufacturer. Contrary to the fuel
consumption changes, these changes will only take effect for new orders.
Existing aircraft will retain their original value.</p>
<p>Last but not least, there have also been additional changes to the
airport data. Besides the already announced changes, Oceania has now
received its overhaul, in which the database has been updated and
corrected with current data, such as runway lengths or the absolute
demand. Some new airports have also been added. Further information is
available in the Development Logbook, which can be found on the forums.</p>
<p>* Nicosia will probably see the recently announced move to new hardware
some time this week.</p>Meigs re-launched2012-04-19T13:45:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-04-19:blog/2012/04/19/meigs-re-launched/<p>After its fatal crash two days ago*, the Meigs game world has been
re-launched. The configuration is the same as it was three weeks ago,
merely several updates affecting the aircraft and airport data as well
as smaller technical adjustments have been added in the meantime. Enjoy
launching your airline (a second time) on
<a href="http://meigs.airlinesim.aero/action/portal/index">Meigs</a>!</p>
<p>* For more information concerning the crash, the data loss and the
re-launch, please refer to the forums and the portal page.</p>Complete data loss of Meigs game world2012-04-18T15:37:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-04-18:blog/2012/04/18/complete-data-loss-of-meigs-game-world/<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">Update:</span></strong>Relaunch of Meigs is now
scheduled for April 19th, early afternoon, Central European Time. This
way we can give Kaitak some more time to pick up it's back-log and more
timezones get a practical chance of getting onto the server early.</p>
<p>We are incredibly sorry to let you know that our newest game world -
Meigs - has experienced a full data loss in yesterday’s downtime. Please
find more information and statements concerning the further proceedings
below.</p>
<p><strong>What has happened?</strong></p>
<p>In the evening of April 17th, a hardware outage in one of our provider’s
data centers had rendered one of our machines - the one which hosts the
two game worlds Kaitak and Meigs - inaccessible. Following a standard
procedure, the server was rebooted to see whether it would come back up
again. For reasons which are unknown to us, this reboot must have caught
the server in an unfortunate moment and thereby corrupted the database
files of the game worlds.</p>
<p><strong>Are there backups?</strong></p>
<p>Apparently, the hardware failure also corrupted the back-up process
which was in progress for Meigs while the outage occurred. We tried to
rescue data from the server’s SSDs but so far have only been successful
in recovering Kaitak’s data. Long story short: We have a complete data
loss and are unable to restore the Meigs game world.</p>
<p><strong>What will happen to Meigs?</strong></p>
<p>Being just about 3 weeks old, Meigs will be restarted just like a
regular new game world as soon as possible. The settings will be the
same as for the original launch and we will take additional measures
against the enormous IPO cheating that was plaguing the server in its
third week.</p>
<p><strong>What happens to the credits on the game world?</strong></p>
<p>The credit purchases are collected in a central account management tool,
so your credit balance remains unaffected.</p>
<p><strong>Will there be any compensations?</strong></p>
<p>Yes, there will be appropriate compensations. Most importantly, all
credits that have been spent on the Meigs game world will be refunded.
As such, playing on Meigs will have been essentially free of charge. On
top of this we will add 30% additional free credits. This way players
which were active for a longer period of time will receive a higher
compensation than those who just snuck a peek.</p>
<p><strong>What will be done to prevent this in the future?</strong></p>
<p>Even though this was a classic sequence of unfortunate events we will
definitely have to rethink and restructure our processes to keep
something like this from happening. We will have to ensure that the
failure of a single server cannot cause a complete data loss like it did
in this case and we will take measures to spread our backups across more
machines and different data centers.</p>
<p><strong>Current Status</strong></p>
<p>Kaitak is running but has a long backlog. It also runs on regular hard
disks right now instead of the faster SSDs it had before, so it will be
picking up slower than usual. This will probably be fixed tomorrow,
inducing another short downtime. Meigs will be restarted as soon as we
have sorted out a compensation plan and all technical issues have been
resolved.</p>
<p><strong>Final words</strong></p>
<p>A combination of technical issues in the data center and human error on
our side have caused this disaster and we are aware that the loss of the
affected player’s airlines hurts a lot. We are extremely sorry about all
of this, but unfortunately we will have to accept the situation as it
is. As such we can only beg your pardon and hope that you will stick
with us either way. Thank you very much for your understanding and
loyalty. We promise to work hard on avoiding such a problem in the
future.</p>PR: 10 Year Anniversary - AirlineSim launches new game world2012-03-28T13:25:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-03-28:blog/2012/03/28/pr-10-year-anniversary-airlinesim-launches-new-game-world/<p>On March 28th 2012, aviation management game AirlineSim's newest game
world, <a href="http://meigs.airlinesim.aero/">Meigs</a>, launched. This, the 9th
game world, follows a long-standing tradition of naming the servers
after airports which have made a keen impression on aviation history -
Meigs, of course, being Chicago's famous waterfront airport, undoubtedly
familiar to fans of the Flight Simulator series. This launch falls on
AirlineSim's 10th year of existence, as a result of which several
interesting changes will be introduced.</p>
<p>Meigs is the first game world to offer a Chinese translation and as such
finally makes the game more accessible to many players from Asia. Among
the various smaller changes and bugfixes, a new economic index finds its
way into the game, adding a new dynamic component to this key aviation
business factor. Traffic flows have been reviewed and are now more
realistic in many parts of the simulated world. Last but not least, a
number of new aircraft types, including the bleeding-edge B787 and the
refreshed B747-8 have been added.</p>
<p>For the project’s 10th anniversary, AirlineSim’s development team have
made some bold plans and a lot of interesting new features can be
expected to arrive this year. But first, the birthday has to be properly
celebrated: This summer, the community will gather on the Balearic
island of Mallorca from September 22nd to look back at 10 years of
AirlineSim history - and to take a look at the project’s future.</p>New game world launches tomorrow2012-03-27T16:09:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-03-27:blog/2012/03/27/new-game-world-launches-tomorrow/<p>After a far too long hiatus, a new AirlineSim game world will finally
launch tomorrow. Since it's the first launch in AirlineSim's 10th year
of existence, we have prepared a bunch of interesting changes to be
introduced with the new game world:</p>
<ul>
<li>The AGEX economic index that will add a additional dynamic component
to the game</li>
<li>A traditional Chinese translation of the game</li>
<li>A reworked traffic model featuring more up-to-date and realistic
traffic flows</li>
<li>Long-awaited new aircraft types including the B787 and B747-8 as
well as several adjusted existing models</li>
<li>New measures against the initial flood of used aircraft at server
start (i.e. adjusted rules for loans, slower availability of used
aircraft)</li>
<li>Every account will be restricted to a single holding (for now, only
in the new game world)</li>
<li>Several other smaller changes and bugfixes</li>
</ul>
<p>The game world will probably be operational sometime in the morning,
Central European Time. The name of the game world will be announced
tomorrow.</p>AirlineSim Awards 20122012-03-05T13:19:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-03-05:blog/2012/03/05/airlinesim-awards-2012/<p>In AirlineSim you are able to build the airline you always imagined,
pick your favorite aircraft and to fly to you dream destinations. Of the
decisions you make, the choice of your logo or aircraft design, the
layout of your information page or an ad campaign on the forums do not
influence the game itself, but they add a lot to the character of your
airline and they help building the AirlineSim community. To reward this
effort we have decided to revice the AirlineSim Awards, an event known
and appreciated by those who've been with this project for many years.</p>
<p>In three categories we will be handing out a total of nine prizes.
Besides fame and glory for you airline and yourself, the prizes comprise
<strong>piles of free credits</strong>!</p>
<p>Any player currently running at least one airline on any of our game
worlds is eligible to participate in the contest. The logo or design
needs to be your own work and may not infringe the rights of others. Any
pornographic, insulting or otherwise illegal content is prohibited.</p>
<p>The precise rules of the competition as well as details about the
deadlines and prizes <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/topic/1560-ende-airlinesim-awards/">can be found on the
forums</a>.</p>
<p>Have fun any may the best design succeed!</p>
<p>The AirlineSim Team</p>AirlineSim is celebrating!2012-02-01T09:03:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2012-02-01:blog/2012/02/01/airlinesim-is-celebrating/<p>January 2002. On a cold, dull winter day, the idea for a web-based
multiplayer airline simulation took shape. Just a few days later,
the <strong>AirlineSim</strong> project is born!</p>
<p>It's been <strong>10 years</strong> since that first milestone, and the small idea
has grown into a large project, allowing thousands of players to run the
airline of their dreams - and around which a lively and active community
has formed.</p>
<p>To celebrate, this year we want to put on a really special event. On
<strong>September 22nd, 2012</strong>, we will join former team members - and our
fans - in one of the most beautiful regions of <strong>Mallorca</strong> for a look
back at 10 years of AirlineSim!</p>
<p><strong>Join us!</strong></p>
<p>All the information you'll need to take part in this unique event can be
found on this special website:</p>
<p><a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/mallorca2012/"><strong>en.airlinesim.aero/mallorca2012</strong></a></p>
<p>We are looking forward to meet you on Mallorca!</p>AirlineSim wishes you a Merry Christmas...2011-12-22T12:42:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-12-22:blog/2011/12/22/airlinesim-wishes-you-a-merry-christmas/<p>...and a Happy New Year!</p>
<p>Another year is coming to an end, and we’d like to take the opportunity
to thank everyone who has supported us in 2011. Thanks to all our true
fans who - both financially and with their valuable feedback - have
enabled us to proceed in our endeavour to make AirlineSim the best
airline simulation game on the internet, and who stuck with us even when
things didn’t go perfectly. Thanks to all the supporters who helped keep
the project operational by taking care of our servers, providing user
support, doing data research or just being there to look after things
when the situation required it - free of charge! Thanks to the
translators, who just recently started to put a lot of voluntary effort
into making the game available to more people around the globe, with
translations to Dutch, Chinese, Spanish and French finished or in
progress.</p>
<p>AirlineSim remains a semi-professional, community-supported project and
all of the things we have achieved - and will achieve - in the future
wouldn’t have been possible if not for all the people mentioned above -
and many more too numerous to name individually!</p>
<p>We will be taking a few days off to spend some time with friends and
family, and we hope you are able to do the same! In case you decide to
spend a few cosy winter days playing AirlineSim, rest assured that we
will be available for urgent support issues and that we will keep an eye
on our servers even during the holidays.</p>
<p>Last but not least, our little Christmas present for you: On your next
credit purchase, use voucher code CHRISTMAS11 to receive 30 free
credits. The code is valid until December 26th.</p>
<p>Happy Holidays!</p>December Status Update2011-12-04T10:15:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-12-04:blog/2011/12/04/december-status-update/<p>Find below a long overdue summary of current information on AirlineSim:</p>
<p><strong>Development Status</strong><br />
As most active players have doubtlessly notices, we didn't make as much
development progress as we'd like to have made. The prime reason for
this is that we need to finish another (non-game) project which is
taking far more time than planned. Nonetheless, more of these side
projects will be required in the future as we didn't succeed in shaping
AirlineSim into a viable business over the past two years since its
internationalization.</p>
<p>Of course, development and operation of AS will continue, even though we
will need to make some adjustments to our development process. That said
we will move away from the classic patchday model towards a continuous
update strategy. Small and medium-sized changes will be deployed as soon
they are ready and tested. This allows for a far more flexibility during
development and a better utilization of our limited time budget. Larger
features - like the new aircraft configurator scheduled for 1.6 - will
be broken down in as many sub-features as possible and integrated piece
by piece. To some extend this should prevent endless waiting periods in
which no new new features are released due to a lack of resources.</p>
<p>We've been living this new approach for a few weeks now and you can
follow and comment on our progress on the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/forum/41-development-logbook/">development logbook
board</a>.</p>
<p><strong>AirlinSim becoming even more international</strong><br />
For some time now, AirlineSim has been available in Dutch. Although the
game has been built with localization in mind from day one, this is the
first new translation to be introduced since we launched in English two
years ago. But now we got three additional translations in the makings
which should be ready for release in a few months time: Chinese, Spanish
and French. A big thank goes out to the voluntary supporters who have
chosen to tackle this immense amount of work free of charge!</p>
<p><strong>Christmas meet-up in Salzburg</strong><br />
This is a final reminder that this years Christmas meet-up is coming
up! The event will take place on December 17th in the beautiful Austrian
city of Salzburg. All details can be found non the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/forum/36-airlinesim-events/">respective
board</a>.
The Christmas meet-ups are traditionally geared towards being more
family-friendly and less aviation-focused. The two main parts of the
program are strolling the traditional Christmas market and enjoying
local cuisine in cosy atmosphere. To make long things short: The ideal
way of getting to know your fellow alliance member or your biggest
opponents!</p>
<p><strong>Events 2012</strong><br />
Important information for anybody who wants to book early or has to
make arrangements with his employer: The dates for next year's community
event are out! Since 2012 marks the 10th anniversary of AirlineSim,
special emphasis should be put on the special birthday event on
Mallorca.</p>
<ul>
<li>International Meet-Up, Dublin: June 9th and 10th 2012</li>
<li>10th Anniversary Convention, Mallorca: September 22nd and 23rd 2012</li>
<li>Christmas Meet-Up, Location will be determined in Salzburg, Dezember
15th 2012</li>
</ul>
<p>Further information and details on the particular events follow. As
always, feel free to discuss the new events <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero/forum/36-airlinesim-events/">on our
forums</a>!</p>Version 1.5.82011-10-25T16:10:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-10-25:blog/2011/10/25/version-1-5-8/<div>
<span style="color: #ff6600;">UPDATE II: All game worlds have been
patched. Please note that some have accumulated quite a bit of backlog
due to the rather long downtimes.</span>
<span style="color: #ff6600;">UPDATE: For technical reasons we were only
able to upgrade Idlewild and Croydon. The other game worlds will follow
tomorrow. Thank you for your understanding!</span>
Finally, after a regrettably long period of relative silence, we are
able to announce a patchday: Today we will upgrade all game worlds to
version 1.5.8. This is a maintenance release, primarily, largely
consisting of small new features, bugfixes and various performance- and
stability-optimizations. As usual, you can find a complete change-log at
the end of this post.
**A few words about the course of action:** We will upgrade Kaitak and
Idlewild first. If all goes to plan, the other machines will follow
right afterwards. Please be aware that - due to changes to our
statistics database - the upgrade process can take **several hours**
during which the game worlds will be inaccesible. Thank you for your
patience and your understanding!
And here goes the change-log:
- Defect \#1213: Deletion of enterprises with long names may cause
blocker
- Defect \#1218: No partial leasing rate for cancelled leasing
contracts on enterprise liquidation
- Defect \#1219: Headline IGM - Lessee '{0}' files for bankruptcy
- Defect \#1221: Novation of leasing contract fails when provider is
deleted
- Defect \#1225: Fix and optimize relation statistics collection
- Defect \#1230: Generation of weekly transport stats is skipped under
high load
- Defect \#1241: Aircraft naming with more than 40 characters
- Defect \#1295: Interlining within holding structure
- Feature \#1202: Add paging to flight numbers page
- Feature \#1240: Delete Accounts on a gameworld on liquidation of
last holding
- Feature \#1262: Load Monitoring - Additional Filter "Load factor
greater than or equal X"
- Feature \#1282: Finder for free flight numbers
- Change \#1088: Rework company reset/delete page
- Change \#1179: English Translation - Signing IPO
- Change \#1200: Replace remaining in-game links to 4players pages
- Change \#1206: Truncate statistics after about 30 weeks
- Change \#1239: New phrase for Office Transfer Statistics widget
- Change \#1242: Multiple airline deletions by accident
- Change \#1245: HTML-Code in Text
- Change \#1321: Change in text small logo upload
</div>AirlineSim launches 8th game world "Stapleton"2011-07-13T16:03:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-07-13:blog/2011/07/13/airlinesim-launches-8th-game-world-stapleton/<p><em><span style="color: #888888;">This is an official press release
intended for immediate release. If you are a press outlet and require
additional information, please contact <a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;&#109;&#101;&#100;&#105;&#97;&#64;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#117;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#105;&#99;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#101;&#116;">&#109;&#101;&#100;&#105;&#97;&#64;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#117;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#105;&#99;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#101;&#116;</a>.</span></em></p>
<p>It has been almost ten years since the AirlineSim project started. Two
years have flown by since the launch of the first international server
and just a few weeks have passed since the International and German
communities were merged to become one. Now, the online airline
management game AirlineSim has reached another milestone: The eighth
game world - named “Stapleton” after the former airport of Denver - will
go live on the 13th of July. It will be able to accommodate another 1200
players, along with their airlines and imaginations!</p>
<p>In aviation, the digit “8” has become a symbol: Recently developed
aircraft, such as the Boeing 787, 747-8 or the Airbus A380 all carry
this number in their names. And it plays a special role for AirlineSim
as well: Being the first one to be launched after the merger of the
communities, the eighth game world will also be the first one to be
available for both the International and the German community at the
same time.</p>
<p>In this context, the annual AirlineSim Convention will take place in
Frankfurt, August 20th to 21st. Apart from the community meeting,
discussions at the round table with the developers and presentations
from the AirlineSim universe, the team will provide a sneak preview on
upcoming developments and the next major version 1.6. This release will
implement many radical changes which will further enhance long-term
motivation on each and every server.<br />
Moreover, the social part of the convention - an established “routine”
among participants - is not to be missed, whether it’s the giant
“Schnitzel” (escalope) dinner or the adept discussions unfolding as the
typical german cider is served as the grand finale of the evening.</p>8th game world launches tomorrow2011-07-12T16:39:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-07-12:blog/2011/07/12/8th-game-world-launches-tomorrow/<p>Just some basic, last-minute facts about tomorrow's game world launch:</p>
<ul>
<li>The game world will <strong>probably</strong> be launched some time around the
afternoon, CET (the point in time may shift)</li>
<li>The name of the game world will be conclusively announced as soon as
it has opened</li>
<li>The game world will run a standard configuration (that is, same
configuration as Tempelhof or Fornebu, for example)</li>
</ul>
<p>Keep an eye on the portal, forums, our <a href="http://facebook.com/airlinesim" title="External link">Facebook
page</a>
or <a href="https://twitter.com/airlinesim" title="External link">Twitter</a> if you want
to be among the very first players right after launch!</p>Maintenance release 1.5.7.22011-07-07T10:23:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-07-07:blog/2011/07/07/maintenance-release-1-5-7-2/<p>We have patched all game worlds to version 1.5.7.2. This is merely a
maintenance release intended to address some urgend stability and
performance issues. Please find the changes below:</p>
<p>Defect #1169: Leasing/buying second hand aircraft causes exceptions<br />
Defect #1175: Wrong charset in IGMs<br />
Defect #1180: Standard Cabin Config malfunctioning<br />
Defect #1201: Missing English names for countries on former German
servers<br />
Defect #1204: Enterprise selection "forgotten" spanning several
long-running requests<br />
Defect #1207: Leasing/sale contracts can be created twice in some
situations<br />
Defect #1209: Bought second-hand aircraft do not show up in fleet<br />
Feature #1171: Slot Overview - different color for 100% filled slots<br />
Change #1205: Better error pages for StaleState/LockAquisition
exceptions<br />
Change #1208: Refactor registration assignment code<br />
Change #1210: Make country regs re-usable again</p>
<p>If you come across any problems, please let us know!</p>International and German communities merged2011-06-19T10:39:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-06-19:blog/2011/06/19/international-and-german-communities-merged/<p>This is just a short post to let you know that - <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/2011/05/24/two-communities-become-one/">following our earlier
announcement</a> -
the up-to-now separate international and German communities of
AirlineSim have been successfully merged into one this past Saturday.</p>
<p>For our international players this means that - besides the <a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero">new
forums</a> - four new game worlds are now
available in both English and German! Two of these (Idlewild and Devau)
feature special configuration options, so head over and have a look! All
new game worlds are listed on your
<a href="https://secure.simulogics.net/aquila/app/account/index">dashboard</a> in
the account management system, including details on the special
settings.</p>
<p>Please note that these game worlds were offline for several hours
yesterday while they were being moved to new hardware. This means it
might take up to a few days before they have picked up all their
back-log. Thank you for your patience!</p>New discussion boards online2011-06-09T14:41:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-06-09:blog/2011/06/09/new-discussion-boards-online/<p><span style="color: #ff6600;">EDIT: The new forums are now officially in
service! The old ones are kept for reference
<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/archive/forums/">here</a>.</span></p>
<p>A crucial part of our "<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/2011/05/24/two-communities-become-one/">community unification
effort</a>"
are unified forums for all players, no matter what language they speak.
Although it will be another week until the transition of our German
community into the international one takes place, we have put up our new
discussion boards already so you can have a thorough look at them before
our current board goes into "read-only mode" some time next week.</p>
<p>If you already possess an account (you definitely will if you are
playing AirlineSim right now), just head here and sign-in:
<a href="http://community.airlinesim.aero">community.airlinesim.aero</a> No sign-up
required!</p>
<p>We are employing a different software for the new forums and as such,
both you and us will probably need some adjustment time to get used to
all the new or different features. Especially the fact that these boards
will be multi-lingual means that we will require a few weeks to
streamline our processes of posting announcements, dealing with UAB
proceeding, organizing events and similar things that are relevant to
all players independent of language. Please stick with us!</p>
<p>PS: We <em>recommend</em> to start new discussions on the new forums from now
on!</p>Version 1.5.7 and data patch D42011-06-01T11:42:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-06-01:blog/2011/06/01/version-1-5-7-and-data-patch-d4/<p><span style="color: #ff6600;">Update June 6th: We will apply the update
to all game worlds this morning, German time. We have also added one
more fix to the change-log which is highlighted in orange.</span></p>
<p>Finally, the new version 1.5.7 is ready for launch. It has been tested
on Stapleton and we think it is ready for release. Since a test with
real-live data and an actual deployment still isn't the same thing
though, we will first patch Tempelhof and will wait some time (might be
a few hours, maybe a few days) to see what happens. As soon as we are
sure no negative side-effects have been missed, we will roll out the new
versions to all game worlds.</p>
<p>You can find a full change-log below as usual. But in general this
update is about some invisible but hopefully noticeable changes to core
systems to improve performance and the removal of entry barriers <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/2011/04/22/easter-update/">as
described
before</a> for
new players. Please let us know what you think!</p>
<p><strong>Version 1.5.7</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Defect #964: No refund after over-subscribed IPO*</li>
<li>Defect #1061: Stock refunds should amount to book value instead of
market value</li>
<li>Defect #1165: Display in wrong language on some pages</li>
<li><span style="color: #ff6600;">Defect #1168: Actually apply
increased slots at airports after data changes</span></li>
<li>Feature #1049: Hire or train pilots automatically on manual
assignment</li>
<li>Feature #1149: Correction script for falsely blocked funds*</li>
<li>Change #997: Display date in fuel price chart more accurately</li>
<li>Change #1043: Re-style airline creation form</li>
<li>Change #1044: Automatically choose default maintenance partner for
new enterprise (custom setting)</li>
<li>Change #1045: Automatically hire pilots required for new aircraft
(custom setting)</li>
<li>Change #1046: Apply standard seating profile to new aircraft
(custom setting)</li>
<li>Change #1047: Remove explicit assignment of cabin crew</li>
<li>Change #1048: Create (deletable) standard service profile for new
airlines (custom setting)</li>
<li>Change #1051: Remove obsolete badges</li>
<li>Change #1052: Extend interface to allow setting a default seating
configuration</li>
<li>Change #1060: Ensure aircraft go for leasing/sale in 100% condition</li>
<li>Change #1062: Completely revised deletion mechanism for companies</li>
<li>Change #1065: Reduce performance impact of writing operations</li>
<li>Change #1110: Rework listing of enterprises</li>
<li>Change #1113: Remove deprecated legal page</li>
<li>Change #1138: Delete unused typeratings from pilot management</li>
</ul>
<p>* We were not able to figure out why some operations wouldn't refund
blocked funds correctly. Therefore the blocked funds are re-calculated
at every week-end closing and corrected if necessary.</p>
<p><strong>Data patch D4</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Defect #868: Ground network error for SSG / Malabo</li>
<li>Defect #873: Airport Data: location of Qiqihaer (NDG)</li>
<li>Defect #904: Wrong image for Britten-Norman BN-2T Turbine-Islander</li>
<li>Defect #930: Airport Data - Wrong ICAO Code for Tunis</li>
<li>Defect #931: Airport Data - Wrong ICAO Code for Johannesburg</li>
<li>Defect #1000: Airport Data - Rename Oslo Torp to Sandefjord Airport
Torp</li>
<li>Defect #1132: Wrong Country Assignment Airport Ratanakiri</li>
<li>Defect #1141: Spelling: Solomon Islands</li>
<li>Defect #1166: Wrong timezone at Northwest Florida Beaches KECP</li>
<li>Feature #908: Check runway lengths of Canadian airports</li>
<li>Feature #911: New Airport: Can Thon Airport, Vietname</li>
<li>Feature #912: Airport Data - Misc. Airports in CZ and SK</li>
<li>Feature #920: Airport Data - Vietname Airports</li>
<li>Feature #933: New Airport: Lauriston Airport near Hillsborough
(Grenada)</li>
<li>Feature #953: Rename Bristol, VA to Tri City, relocate to Tennessee</li>
<li>Feature #968: Airport Data - New Airtport Tartu, Estonia</li>
<li>Feature #971: New Airport Pardubice, Czech Republic</li>
<li>Feature #977: Ground Network Hawaii Islands</li>
<li>Feature #1129: New airports in Peru: Huanuco and Jauja</li>
<li>Feature #1135: New Australian airport: Rottnest Island (RTS)</li>
<li>Change #857: Night Time Ban in Baku/GYD</li>
<li>Change #885: Night flying ban in Klagenfurt</li>
<li>Change #905: Dubai World Central renamed</li>
<li>Change #918: Spelling of Harrisburg (MDT)</li>
<li>Change #922: Aguni and Taramajima in wrong subdivision</li>
<li>Change #932: Match naming of Tenerife Airports</li>
<li>Change #954: Runway Length and passenger demand Riga</li>
<li>Change #959: Correct name of La Fria (LFR)</li>
<li>Change #960: Algeria: Two new airports and various
runway/demand/data updates</li>
<li>Change #961: Casablanca Anfa closed</li>
<li>Change #962: Runway length Nanaimo, BC, CA</li>
<li>Change #963: Runway lengths Aleknagik, Anacortes and Roche Harbor</li>
<li>Change #967: Boeing 737-900 not offered anymore</li>
<li>Change #972: Boa Viste, CV runway length</li>
<li>Change #973: Nelspruit, SA wrong location</li>
<li>Change #974: Kubin Island, AU runway length</li>
<li>Change #975: Caxias do Sul, BR wrong location</li>
<li>Change #978: Tokyo Haneda - lift night flying ban</li>
<li>Change #979: Tegucigalpa runway length</li>
<li>Change #990: Various runway lengths in Island</li>
<li>Change #993: Runway length St. Maarten (SXM)</li>
<li>Change #996: Runway length and passenger demand of Natal (NAT)</li>
<li>Change #999: Uummannaq (UMD) is a heliport only</li>
<li>Change #1131: Additional ICAO codes Phillipines</li>
<li>Change #1134: Runway length Singapore Seletar</li>
<li>Change #1148: Runway length Sao Vincente (GVSV)</li>
<li>Change #1167: Runway length Sofia</li>
</ul>Two communities become one2011-05-24T20:50:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-05-24:blog/2011/05/24/two-communities-become-one/<p>As you might know, AirlineSim has been in existence since long before
the first international game world started in 2009. In fact, AirlineSim
was founded almost 10 years ago, as a purely German-language hobby
project, and has since developed into the game it is today. The division
of the game into separate German and international communities occurred
for contractual reasons, rather than resulting from any desire to split
the playerbase.</p>
<p>This June, however, this community split will come to an end! As we will
be saying goodbye to our German publisher, we will have the ability to
merge our German and international communities under one roof - both
administratively and technically, giving us an integrated support and
administrative structure for the first time - and, naturally, we'll be
taking the opportunity to do just that.</p>
<p>There are plenty of advantages for both the players and us in this deal:
First of all, all players - independent of their language - will be able
to use any of our game worlds! When we make the switch (probably on June
18th), there will be a total of 7 game worlds available, with an 8th and
more being added in the near future. We will set up a new discussion
board* with both language-specific and common areas which will only
require a single login and give access to the latest information to all
players at the same time. Last but not least, the overhead caused by
running two completely independent systems will be reduced considerably
so we will have more time for what's most important: Working on
AirlineSim!</p>
<p>If you currently only have an international account, you won't have to
do anything. We will let you know as soon as the new forums are ready,
but beyond that everything will mostly remain the same for you. In case
you also call a German account your own, please refer to the more
elaborate announcement on our <a href="http://airlinesim.4players.de/portal/2011/05/24/airlinesim-communities-wachsen-zusammen/">German
page</a>
for more in-depth information.</p>
<p><span style="color: #888888;">* The current forums will be set to
read-only and kept available for future reference.</span></p>Payment news...aplenty!2011-05-12T13:29:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-05-12:blog/2011/05/12/payment-news-aplenty/<p>Today, paying for your credits has once again become a lot easier. We
have integrated a total of three new payment methods for you as well as
activated several new countries for Ukash prepaid cards. Find all the
details you need below!</p>
<p><strong>New payment method 1: Online Transfers</strong></p>
<p>This payment method allows you to initiate a bank transfer online. The
payment is executed immediately and we receive the payment confirmation
right away. Consequently, the payment process is as brief as that of a
credit card payment.</p>
<p>Online transfers are available in these countries: Germany, United
Kingdom, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland. Please note that
some banks do not offer the required interface for this payment method.</p>
<p><strong>New payment method 2: Prepayment</strong></p>
<p>This method is similar to Online Transfers but differs in the fact that
you pay via a a regular bank transfer. The advantage: You can use your
bank account even if your bank does not support online transfers. The
disadvantage: It might take a few hours or days until we receive the
payment and your credits are available.</p>
<p>Prepayment is available in all Euro-countries. If your bank supports
SWIFT transfers in EUR it might even be possible to use this method
outside of Europe or in non-EUR countries.</p>
<p><strong>New payment method 3: Pay-by-Call</strong></p>
<p>If you neither possess a credit card nor a bank account, this payment
method might come in handy. It allows you to pay for your credits using
your fixed line phone. Please note that this is a rather expensive means
of payment, especially outside of Germany. Depending on country it might
still be cheaper than mobile payments though.</p>
<p>Pay-by-Call is available in these countries: Germany, Belgium, Finland,
France, United Kingdom, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, Poland,
Switzerland, Sweden, Slovakia, Spain, Czech Republic and Hungary.</p>
<p><strong>UKash: Extended list of countries</strong></p>
<p>UKash is a prepaid card that can be purchased at many outlets worldwide.
As such it can be paid for in cash and allows for completely anonymous
online payments. Since we have activated plenty of new countries for
this payment method, see the following list to check whether UKash is
available in your country.</p>
<p>Europe: UK, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Belgium,
Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Slovenia,
Cyprus, Switzerland, Austria, Hungary</p>
<p>Middle East: KSA, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, Iraq,
Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Israel</p>
<p>Africa: South Africa, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Ghana,
Nigeria</p>
<p>Asia: China, Malaysia</p>
<p>North America: Canada</p>
<p>South America: Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, Bolivia, Mexico</p>
<p>Oceania: Australia, New Zealand</p>Easter Update2011-04-22T09:56:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-04-22:blog/2011/04/22/easter-update/<p>After a rather long period of silence it's about time for a status
update concerning current and future AirlineSim development.</p>
<p><strong>Results from Hamburg: Easier access!</strong></p>
<p>How many steps does it take to get an aircraft flying in AirlineSim?
We've been asking ourselves this question on this years team meeting in
Hamburg and after short counting the answer was: About 10! Even though
these do not even include optional steps like browsing for the best
starting airport or the optimal launch fleet they pose a major hurdle
for beginners and make many of them quit the game before they have
scheduled a single flight.</p>
<p>To tackle this issue and the resulting loss of new players we have
agreed on a package of "immediate measures" to be implemented in the
upcoming patch to 1.5.7. Their basic goal will be to automize as many
steps as possible in between sign-up and first take-off. Beginners
should not have to quit the game because they are overwhelmed by the
interface but instead should have an easy start so they can investigate
AirlineSim's rich and detailed feature-set after they've got their basic
enterprise up and running.</p>
<p>In practice it will look like this: Whenever an airline is founded, it
has a default on-board service profile set up already that will be used
for all flights. A maintenance provider is pre-selected and aircraft are
equiped with a seating configuration on delivery/purchase. If no such
configuration exists yet, AirlineSim will create a standard one. All
auto-generated profiles can of course be deleted and replaced by own
ones. Beyond this, staff management has been streamlined considerably -
not only for beginners. Pilots are hired or trained automatically on
assignment while the management of cabin crews has been completely
automized and does not have to be handled manually at all anymore.
Aircraft are ready to use right after purchase - having seating
installed and crew assigned - and flights can be scheduled immediately.
Further optimizations are planned but might not make it into the next
release.</p>
<p>Before the pro-gamers among you get scared of loss of control, behold:
All these comfort tools can be disabled in your custom settings and for
existing accounts and companies they won't be activated in the first
place.</p>
<p><strong>On our way to 1.6</strong></p>
<p>Other than these immediate changes we have layed out the core goals for
1.6. What we are thinking about in detail will not be disclosed just
yet. But one important fact should be announced already: According to
current planning, 1.6 probably won't be backwards compatible. For this
reason we want to realize as many feature ideas and improvements in the
lifespan of version 1.5. As with the broader 1.6-goals, these changes
will adhere closely to the results of the survey we ran on out forums
just a few weeks back and which generated some pretty clear results on
what things about AirlineSim are most important to you. Consequently, we
want to work on these areas as much as possible.</p>
<p>To put long things short, this sums up our current roadmap: AirlineSim
has to become more accessible to new players, but it will also remain a
specialized, complex and challenging business simulation.</p>
<p>As always we are neither able nor willing to answer the inevitable
question for a realese date. The only thing for certain right now is the
fact that quite a bit of Jet-A will get burned before 1.6 will hit the
browsers. Another important piece of information: If 1.6 actually proves
to be incompatible with previous versions, all 1.5 game worlds will
remain in operation until community interest vanishes.</p>
<p><strong>New game world and version 1.5.7. This and that.</strong></p>
<p>As soon as development and testing of the new comfort tools as well as
some performance improvements has been completed, we will patch all game
worlds to 1.5.7. After these changes have proven themselves in
production we would like to start a new international game world for
which there is no launch date yet, of course. We also got a data patch
in the pipeline but it won't be completed before Easter.</p>
<p>Last but not least we'd like to point your attention to the upcoming
community meet-up in Prague. If you want to be there on June 11th make
sure to book your flights and hotels as soon as possible. Prices are
rising by the day! As usual, the meet-up and its program can be
discussed on our forums.</p>New approach to slot problem2011-04-01T09:29:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-04-01:blog/2011/04/01/new-approach-to-slot-problem/<p><span style="color: #008000;"><em>This of course was our contribution to
April Fools Day ;-)</em></span></p>
<p>Tomorrow we will be holding our annual team meeting to discuss the
further development of AirlineSim in its boadest sense. While preparing
for this event, we addressed a somewhat smaller but nevertheless urgent
issue: Lack of slots.</p>
<p>Every player knows the problem: After a game world is some weeks or even
months old, free slots become scarce at most larger airports. This
problem is fueled by the misuse of slots - for example by employing
small props on trunk routes - or the intentional blocking of slots.</p>
<p>Unfortunately there is no simple solution to this issue. Every approach
we have thought about so far has its own disadvantages. One-time or
recurring payments for slots favor large airlines over small and young
ones. Big airlines will always be able to afford their slots and thereby
the occurence of the problem will only be postponed. A strict assignment
based on size of aircraft and route is too rigid to allow for new or
experimental airline concepts and as such does not provide a solution
either. Implementing complex assignment rules from reality - like
grandfather rights or similar mechanisms - would require a bloated and
complicated interface and would - as most complex rules in a game do -
cause several unwanted side-effects that cannot be anticipated in
advance. The seemingly easiest solution - removing or softening the slot
limits - could not find a majority among the team since it would
effectively diminish one of AirlineSim's most important features: The
mere existence of actual resource limitiations. The idea of assigning
slots for actual credits was short-lived and discarded for obvious
reasons.</p>
<p>Following the success of the User Advisory Board we have therefore
followed a totally different approach: If strict rules don't suffice and
when artificial intelligence won't do, actual humans have to step in. As
such, in the future slots will be granted by a so-called "slot manager"
as soon as a certain treshold has been exceeded. This manager is elected
by the airport's local airlines for a fixed amount of time and he has to
decide which flights will get approval and which won't.</p>
<p>By means of this feature, the game is enriched by a completely new
social and strategic aspect since from now on airports will differ in
their "political attitude". The players will keep their influence via
the election and they will be able to decide whether they prefer a
pro-corporation or a pro-start-up management. We will be able to judge
whether this approach works as we envisioned it as soon as we have
patched to version 1.5.7. This will be the patch to contain the changes.
As long as no slot-manager is elected, slots are granted automatically
every day while prefering airlines local to the airport or the airport's
country. To ensure a quick and smooth introduction we will provide
"start managers" where desired. If you are interested in being one of
these, please contact support and provide your airport and game world.
If more than one application comes in for any given airport, the initial
manager will be picked by lot.</p>
<p>We are looking forward to your feedback and are very excited about
seeing this feature unfold within the game. Unfortunately, we are unable
to provide a specific launch date for 1.5.7 as of yet.</p>Your ideas for AirlineSim 1.62011-03-21T09:45:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-03-21:blog/2011/03/21/your-ideas-for-airlinesim-1-6/<p>It's that time of the year when our team usually meets in a hotel for 2
days to figure out where the further development of AirlineSim in the
following year should be heading. before we do so we would like to hear
your ideas and wishes for the next major milestone of the game.</p>
<p>Therefore we'd like you to participate in a short, 9 keyword survey to
tell us where you see the defining features of AS, what you are missing
the most and which parts need an overhaul most urgently. Please find the
survey
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?p=15698#post15698">HERE</a>.</p>
<p>We are looking forward to your input and thank you for your support!</p>Version 1.5.62011-03-01T11:43:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-03-01:blog/2011/03/01/version-1-5-6/<p>It's patchday! Later today we will install the new version 1.5.6. Since
this update includes some critical changes to core systems we will apply
the patch very carefully. Therefore it might take a little bit longer
than usual to get all game worlds up-tp-date. As always, please keep an
eye on our <a href="https://twitter.com/airlinesim">Twitter account</a>. We will
post all the latest information concerning the patch day via this
channel.</p>
<p>One more important note: We already gave some insight into the difficult
hunt for the "stuck aircraft bug" in our last report "from the hangar".
Even though this problem shows up as "solved" in the change-log (defect
#761) this merely is a attempt to solve the issue which might turn out
to work differently than expected or not at all.</p>
<p>The complete change-log:</p>
<ul>
<li>Defect #761: Aircraft get stuck in the air</li>
<li>Defect #769: Ckeck Traffic rights on connections</li>
<li>Defect #869: Error on searching “ville”</li>
<li>Defect #870: Add stocks to company value</li>
<li>Defect #874: Wrong Stock-ID display in Stock transaction histories</li>
<li>Defect #887: Wrong time window in load monitoring</li>
<li>Defect #917: Aircraft evaluation tool ignores aircraft age in
maintenance cost calculation</li>
<li>Defect #919: Airline and airport schedule show different results
for identical route</li>
<li>Defect #921: Lifted night flying bans do not come into effect</li>
<li>Defect #928: Personnel expenses charged twice, jump in stock rate
shortly after</li>
<li>Feature #817: “Remove selected days’ flights” – Aircraft / Flight
planning page</li>
<li>Feature #853: Display country of interlining partners in contract
listing</li>
<li>Feature #894: Show Manager/Director on Alliance Page</li>
<li>Feature #906: Add text with information about a possible IPO on
founding a new enterprise</li>
<li>Feature #955: Extend Statistic Values (public) on Airline Info Page</li>
<li>Feature #957: Link to Enterprise/Overview</li>
<li>Feature #958: Aircraft histories</li>
<li>Feature #983: Load Monitoring – sortable Columns / link to route</li>
<li>Change #872: Display enterprise name on deletion</li>
<li>Change #907: Stock quote – minimum stock quote of 1 AS\$</li>
<li>Change #965: Display business relation of contractual partner in
table</li>
<li>Change #966: Rename function: deactivate game world</li>
<li>Change #992: Stock Market: Avoid 0 stock emissions</li>
<li>Change #994: Simplify office and route deletion</li>
</ul>Now available: Mobile payments2011-02-18T11:17:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-02-18:blog/2011/02/18/now-available-mobile-payments/<p>From today, we offer a new payment method. Since in many countries
credit cards or PayPal are not common means of payment, we decided to
provide a way to use your cellphone to purchase credits. To do so we
employ the infrastructure of <a href="http://www.mopay.com">MoPay</a>, a renowned
provider of mobile payment solutions. So if neither one of our prepaid
providers nor any other payment method is available to you or in your
country check whether a mobile payment is possible.</p>
<p>A few important notes concerning the new payment method:</p>
<ul>
<li>Mobile payments are not available in all countries either. For now
we have implemented the following countries: Australia, Czech
Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Hungary,
Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Singapore,
Ukraine, Great Britain</li>
<li>We will add more countries later on. If you are missing one in
particular, please let us know!</li>
<li>Mobile carriers provide specific price points that are available for
payments within their networks. Because of this, not all package
sizes can be paid by phone but only those with a price close enough
to the provided price points. If you want to pay with your mobile
make sure to check the different package sizes.</li>
<li>Since carriers take a large share of the amount paid by the
customer, mobile payments are a rather expensive means of payment.
That's why credits bought employing this method are usually pricier
compared to the offers we provided so far.</li>
</ul>News from the hangar2011-02-01T09:04:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-02-01:blog/2011/02/01/news-from-the-hangar/<p>Since the new year started it's been rather quiet around AirlineSim.
Therefore we'd like to give you a brief insight into what we are working
on right now.</p>
<p><strong>Planning for 1.6</strong></p>
<p>In our <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/2010/12/12/a-short-status-report/">last status
report</a>
we already mentioned that the aircraft and performance system will
probably be at the center of the next major update. But while we are at
it we'd like to take the opportunity of using this considerable change
to the system to improve and polish AirlineSim in as many aspects as
possible. To do so we have started a thorough definition process to
find - as the first step - all the things positive, negative and
otherwise noteworthy about AirlineSim which make it the game it is
today. Given this catalogue we will take a close look at all these
features and rate them according to an overall concept we are working
out for 1.6. The goal of this procedure is to identify and eliminate the
many conceptual shortcomings the game is suffering from due to its long
and rich history.</p>
<p>The overall process is in its starting phase right now. We aim to finish
it within 2 to 3 months and we will most definitely involve the
community at some point in time as well. We will keep you posted!</p>
<p><strong>New payment methods</strong></p>
<p>We've spent a lot of our development time last month to extend our
payment system. The primary goal of this effort was to allow for more
international payment methods and local currencies. As a first result,
players from Argentina as well as Mexico have been able to use
paysafecard in their local currencies for a few weeks now and we are
happy to announce that we will introduce a new payment method within the
coming weeks: Mobile payments! Users from an initial set of about 20
countries will be able to use their cell phone to pay for credits. As
soon as this feature is implemented, additional information will follow.</p>
<p><strong>The "stuck aircraft bug"</strong></p>
<p>Some of you have been affected by this issue, while some of you might
just have have read about it on the forums. Either way: Due to a bug,
aircraft get stuck sproradically. Subsequent flights are consequently
cancelled, and can generate considerable costs for the affected
operator. Unfortunately we have not been able to identify the exact
cause of this issue. Maybe this can illustrate why it is so hard to
find: In an average game world about 1 million flights are operated
every week. Since we estimate that the bug occurs about a dozen times a
day - spanning all game worlds - the result is an error ratio of 0.008%.
Judging from the error reports we got so far no particular connection to
any in-game action (like scheduling flights, doing transfers or similar)
exists, which leaves us with no clue at all about the origin of the bug.
And as long as we are unable to reproduce the bug there is almost no way
of fixing it.</p>
<p>To get rid of the problem we are working on a workaround - namely,
bypassing the affected part of the program altogether, which should
effectively fix the issue for the players. Until this is implemented we
ask all affected players to send in an email to our support containing
the registration of any stuck aircraft along with the game world you are
playing in; given that, we can get it moving again. Please excuse the
fact that we are not able to refund the costs incured in-game.</p>
<p><strong>Upcoming updates</strong></p>
<p>As soon as the problem described above has been taken care of we will
apply a maintenance patch. As usual this patch will include various
smaller fixes and changes. We are also working on a new costing feature
which is still in an experimental stage and will be covered in detail in
a dedicated blog post.</p>
<p>Beyond that we have another data patch in the pipeline which has not
been tagged with a specific date yet. If you come across data bugs or
missing airports please let us know by dropping an email to our support
and we will include the respective fixes in the patch.</p>
<p><strong>Other projects</strong></p>
<p>Of course we do not want to withold another major reason for the
relative silence around AirlineSim: In parallel to AirlineSim we are
also working on prototypes for potential new game projects to launch
later this year. After <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?t=1601">asking for your
opinions</a>
concerning this last year we are now in the phase of working out various
concepts in detail. Basically the top candidates right now are another
browser-game and a single-player desktop game - both business
simulations of course - while other concepts have not been ruled out
completely. This thorough preparatory work requires a lot of time and
effort but we are confident that it will pay off later in terms of
quality.</p>
<p>We will keep you informed about the development in this area as well, so
stay tuned!</p>Our community events 20112011-01-10T16:22:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2011-01-10:blog/2011/01/10/our-community-events-2011/<p>They've become a tradition with AirlineSim and they are highly popular
with their attendees: The community meet-ups!</p>
<p>Of course we will have these in 2011 as well and they will follow a by
now proven pattern: Spread across the year there will be three events.
The first will be the international meet-up in a non-German country,
designed specifically for our international community. Then there will
be the two-day AirlineSim Convention, an events geared towards the
aviation and AirlineSim enthusiasts with a matching program. And last
but not least we'll end the year with the Christmas meet-up in cosy
atmosphere with friends and family.</p>
<p>After several polls we decided on these places and dates for 2011's
events:</p>
<p><strong>International Meet-Up:</strong> Prague, Czech Republic, June 11th/12th</p>
<p><strong>AirlineSim Convention:</strong> Frankfurt, Germany, August 20th/21st</p>
<p><strong>Christmas Meet-Up:</strong> Salzburg, Austria, December 17th/18th</p>
<p>Planning and preparation of the events will take place on the German and
international forums and, as usual, participants and interested users
are invited to help. More detailed information concerning the particular
events will be released in time in this location.</p>Version 1.5.5 and data patch D32010-12-21T10:55:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-12-21:blog/2010/12/21/version-1-5-5-and-data-patch-d3/<p>Today is the last patch day of 2010. The 1.5.5 update is a rather small
one including few but helpful additions while the data patch is the
largest so far. We will probably run the patches some time late this
morning or in the early afternoon (CET). Since all game worlds and
systems are patched today, please expect downtimes up to 15 or more
minutes.</p>
<p>The new features include a new office listing page which provides you
with a more detailed view of all your offices. It is sortable by almost
all fields, can be filtered by country, gives you a quick overview of
night flying bans and noise restrictions at your stations and provides
average passenger and cargo load information for the flights that
departed from the respective office during the last and current week.
Linked from there is, among your flight schedule at any of your offices
and the office itself, a new tab of the route page containing more
detailed load information for all your outbound or inbound routes at the
given office. The listing is sortable as well and provides separate
averages for this and the two previous weeks. Both features should
greately improve your ability to spot weak or overloaded routes.</p>
<p>Please also note that rescue loans are only granted twice in a row from
now on. This means you get two recue loans to restructure your business.
If you fail to do so a third closing with a negative cash balance will
cause the liquidation of your enterprise! The counting starts after the
patch, so in case you received rescue loans before you still got two
free shots.</p>
<p>The data patch D3 contains a great amount of new airports (primarily in
China) and a a lot of fixes and changes to the airport database. Also
included are two new aircraft types, namely the A330-200F (two variants)
and the CRJ-1000 (three variants). We had more new aircraft types
planned for this release, but <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/2010/12/12/a-short-status-report/">as mentioned
earlier</a>
we came across various issues concerning our legacy aircraft performance
system and the data fed to it. We will hold back further new models
until these fundamental problems are fixed.</p>
<p>For a detailed list of all changes, please click the link below.</p>
<!--more-->
<p><strong>1.5.5 change log</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Defect #593: Statistics - sum for pax/freight incorrect</li>
<li>Defect #756: Staff motivation does not change</li>
<li>Defect #760: Wrong staff/salary totals</li>
<li>Defect #766: Several Spelling Error</li>
<li>Feature #821: Route load check tab on office page</li>
<li>Feature #840: Send predefined IGM on name violation</li>
<li>Change #645: Public listing of enterprise's contractual partners</li>
<li>Change #806: Rework of offices page</li>
<li>Change #856: Only grant rescue loans twice in a row</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>D3 change log</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Defect #516: Ground network for DMM and BAH</li>
<li>Defect #519: Puttaparthi runway length</li>
<li>Defect #615: Naming of Singaporian airports</li>
<li>Defect #699: Spelling of São José dos Campos (SJK)</li>
<li>Defect #701: Los Roques (Venezuela) in ground network of Caracas</li>
<li>Defect #713: Airport Split Error: Changsha (CSX) / Huanghua (HHA)</li>
<li>Defect #767: Various misspelled airports</li>
<li>Defect #768: Velikij Ustyug (VUS) - wrong spelling and runway
length</li>
<li>Defect #786: ICAO Code for Klagenfurt</li>
<li>Defect #788: Updated runway lengths of various Canadian airports</li>
<li>Defect #789: Erbil airport extended (runway, traffic, size)</li>
<li>Defect #790: Removed night flying bans for 5 South American
airports</li>
<li>Defect #854: Runway length: Cap Skirring (CSK / GOGS)</li>
<li>Feature #498: Add Airbus A330F</li>
<li>Feature #521: MIssing airport Pai/Thailand</li>
<li>Feature #560: New Airport: Chicago Rockford International Airport</li>
<li>Feature #566: New Airport: Mont-Tremblant</li>
<li>Feature #567: New Airport: Gulu (Uganda)</li>
<li>Feature #607: New airport: Santa Cruz El Trompillo</li>
<li>Feature #696: New Airport: Zonguldak (Turkey)</li>
<li>Feature #698: New Airport: Enfidha</li>
<li>Feature #725: 33 new airports in China</li>
<li>Feature #762: Mubarak International Airport is missing</li>
<li>Feature #805: CRJ1000 NextGen</li>
<li>Feature #855: New airport: Saint-Louis (XLS/GOSS), Senegal</li>
<li>Change #60: Production of Dash8-200/300 ceased in 2009</li>
<li>Change #522: Airport: Union Island Nighttime ban</li>
<li>Change #569: Timezones several russian airports</li>
<li>Change #682: Dominica Melville Hall - runway length corrected/night
flying ban removed</li>
<li>Change #695: Praia runway length</li>
<li>Change #700: Dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles</li>
<li>Change #726: Various updated traffic numbers for Chinese airports</li>
</ul>A short status report2010-12-12T22:42:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-12-12:blog/2010/12/12/a-short-status-report/<p>Hi everyone - I'd just like to briefly outline what we're currently
working on, and what updates are planned for the next few weeks. First
of all, I'd again like to draw your attention to our <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/2010/11/30/airlinesim%e2%80%99s-christmas-fundraiser/">Christmas
fundraiser</a>,
which will remain open until the 24th of December. Anyone who hasn't yet
made any donations still has two weeks to do so - remember, you'll walk
away with some free credits!</p>
<p><strong>Data Patch D3 and Aircraft Data</strong></p>
<p>There's some good news and bad news to report on these fronts. First the
good news: the D3 data patch will be released in December, and will
bring with it a large number of new airports, including more than 30 in
China alone. The patch also contains a lot of updated airport traffic
information, a number of revisions to airport ground connection links
and similar changes.</p>
<p>The bad news is that the aircraft data, which we were hoping to release
alongside D3, has been a major headache. The patch <strong>will</strong> see the
introduction of two new aircraft models - namely, the Airbus A330-200F
and the Bombardier CRJ-1000NG - but our work in preparing for the
introduction of these two aircraft has highlighted some significant
'legacy' issues with the way AirlineSim handles performance data. As a
result of this, the performance of these new aircraft may in some ways
be a little odd - their fuel consumption, for example, may not match
their less-advanced predecessors, as a consequence of the (unfortunately
well-known) shortcomings in the way fuel consumption is handled
internally.</p>
<p>As a consequence of this, we're intending to spend some time conducting
a general overhaul of aircraft performance data and the way it's
handled, rather than focusing on new or otherwise neglected models. How
this may end up looking is not currently clear, but there's a chance the
work may lead up to - and develop into - the next major update (i.e
AirlineSim 1.6), in which case it'd bring with it a number of new
features and major changes. Final decisions on this process aren't being
taken until 2011, however, so we'll keep you posted!</p>
<p><strong>Updates to the Payment System</strong></p>
<p>We spent most of the past week working on our payment system. Our aim
was to prepare the system for the introduction of new, more
internationally-compatible payment methods, including support for
foreign currencies. This should make AirlineSim available in a number of
countries which have so far been mostly locked out of the game, for want
of a suitable payment method for the majority of the prospective
playerbase. This has taken - and is still taking - longer than we'd
like, but the update will be going live over the next week, and the
revised payment system should be entirely online by the end of the year.
The German servers will continue to have their payments handled through
4players, so no change there.</p>
<p><strong>The Next Patch: 1.5.5</strong></p>
<p>Last but not least, some informaton on the next game system update. Our
original intention was to make 1.5.5 a 'hotfix' for any problems
introduced by 1.5.4 and the associated changes to the stock exchange
system. However, this hasn't really proved necessary; most of the
changes are not very high on our priority list, while preventing stock
price surges after IPOs is not really practical right now given the
amount of work that would be involved. Therefore, those changes already
implemented will make their way into the revised v1.5.5, which we're
planning to release in the last week before Christmas. Besides the usual
bug fixes, 1.5.5 will probably contain some new and very useful analysis
tools, which should help you optimise your existing routes. There's a
small preview of them here:
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=466734372076">Click!</a></p>
<p>That about wraps things up for the time being! We're also organising our
usual Christmas meetup this weekend in Nuremberg - you can find
information on the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums">forums</a>, as
always.</p>AirlineSim’s Christmas Fundraiser2010-11-30T23:47:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-11-30:blog/2010/11/30/airlinesim%e2%80%99s-christmas-fundraiser/<div>
With the launch of version 1.5 and several new game worlds, 2010
has been an exciting year for AirlineSim. Our usual modus operandi for
the looming Christmas season would be to run some games and giveaways
for our loyal playerbase. And although we still want to give something
back to the community, this year we thought we’d go about it in a
slightly different way.
</p>
More specifically, we got to thinking: simply giving away credits is a
nice gesture, but it’s not really anything more than that. While we all
play the day away on the Internet, from the comfort of our homes, there
are people who can’t be sure where their next meal is coming from; while
we direct our airline empires from the ground, the real world’s air and
seas are menaced by pollution and climate change; while we grumble about
hidden costs when booking a flight, many others are only too aware of
the hidden costs of political dissent. So, while we want to reward our
players, we’d also love to encourage everyone to help out a little over
Christmas.
For this reason, we’re going to be running a special AirlineSim
fundraiser: Anyone making a donation to a charitable organisation
working in the fields of human rights, environmental and climate
protection or humanitarian assistance between the 1st and 24th of
December may forward us a copy of their receipt (to
<support@airlinesim.aero>). In return, we will reimburse the donor with
AirlineSim game credits worth 5x the amount donated. Whether it’s a
small neighbourhood project or a global organisation doesn’t matter:
every donation counts!
We look forward to your commitments, and we hope we can give away plenty
of credits!
</div>
<p><span style="color: #888888;"><strong>Small Print</strong></span></p>
<p><span style="color: #888888;">1. To prevent abuse, we can only accept a
maximum of one receipt per account.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #888888;">2. A scan of the receipt sent to our
support address, support@airlinesim.aero, is sufficient proof of a
donation - paper copies aren’t necessary.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #888888;">3. For donations made via PayPal, bank
transfers or other digital payment methods, a screenshot of the payment
confirmation and a contact address or website of the organization should
be provided.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #888888;">4. We reserve the right to audit
recipients of donations, and will not provide reimbursements to projects
or groups found not to be serious charitable organisations.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #888888;">5. The amount of credits reimbursed is
based on the donated amount in EUR. Recent exchange rates will be
applied if required.</span></p>Version 1.5.42010-11-25T17:52:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-11-25:blog/2010/11/25/version-1-5-4/<p>Today all game worlds received the scheduled update to version 1.5.4.
This update includes the <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/2010/11/19/coming-up-new-stock-market-rules/">already announced
changes</a>
to the stock market rules. Beyond that it is a regular maintenance
release fixing various bugs and introducing smaller improvements. One of
these is the in-game support page which gives you a brief overview over
all available support channels.</p>
<p>Read the rest of the article to get a full change log.</p>
<!--more-->
<ul>
<li>Defect #658: Completion Date for new Buildings not affected by time
setting</li>
<li>Defect #668: "Create first airline" bubble covers info menu</li>
<li>Defect #697: Check highly indreasing loan interest</li>
<li>Defect #716: Bank account statement not affected by time setting</li>
<li>Defect #745: Stock chart not limited to 2 months</li>
<li>Defect #757: Incorrect handling of terminated leasing contracts
when provider is deleted</li>
<li>Feature #655: In-Game Support Information</li>
<li>Feature #680: Alliance - add function to kick member</li>
<li>Feature #711: Add Spielewiese integration (only German game worlds)</li>
<li>Feature #714*: Language change widget in top bar</li>
<li>Feature #738: Alliance market share statistic at airports</li>
<li>Feature #753: Periodical update of official stock offers</li>
<li>Change #667: Check name against black-list on alliance foundation
process</li>
<li>Change #737: Improved alliance criterion for relation statistics</li>
<li>Change #743: Semi-automatic stock rate generation</li>
<li>Change #744: New procedure for IPO termination</li>
</ul>
<p>* This feature won't be activated until first translations are
finished.</p>Coming up: New stock market rules2010-11-19T18:14:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-11-19:blog/2010/11/19/coming-up-new-stock-market-rules/<p>The launch of our latest international server (Tempelhof) has shown
that, starting with the first IPOs, there has been an excessive level of
abuse of the stock markets. For that reason, the run-up period to an IPO
on the latest German server (Fornebu) was extended to give us time to
work out some important changes to the stock market rules. Discussions
regarding this problem took place on the German forums and were based on
the following premises:</p>
<ul>
<li>Both the problems affecting IPOs and later share trading need to be
addressed.</li>
<li>The stock market is not in itself a key game feature. As such, the
strategic element takes precedence over the speculative one.</li>
</ul>
<p>The discussion resulted in the following measures being decided upon, to
be implemented in the upcoming version 1.5.4:</p>
<ol>
<li>IPOs can only be subscribed to a maximum of 200% of the shares
offered.</li>
<li>The stock rate follows a given base rate, tied closely to the
company value, and gives a rough prognosis on the company's
development.</li>
<li>Stock rate changes through trade will only be possible within +/-
10% of the base rate.</li>
</ol>
<p>As a result, players who are active on the stock market should be aware
that, when the patch is implemented, stock listings may change
significantly. The magnitude of this can be approximated based on the
company value of any publicly traded company.</p>
<p>Important: The formula for the calculations of the base rate is not yet
final and will most likely need optimizing after the patch is
implemented. If you're seeing significant losses on the stock market, it
is recommended that you sit out and wait for future changes to the
calculation methods.</p>
<p>We expect to apply this patch towards the end of next week, depending on
the results of further internal testing.</p>Version 1.5.3, data patch D22010-09-29T19:24:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-09-29:blog/2010/09/29/version-1-5-3-data-patch-d2/<p>Today we had yet another maintenance release including two updates: The
upgrade to version 1.5.3 and a small data patch D2. Both have been
applied to all three game worlds. For a detailed list of all included
changes, please refer to this thread on the forums:
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?p=12350#post12350">Click!</a></p>Update 1.5.2 and news round-up2010-08-23T10:19:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-08-23:blog/2010/08/23/update-1-5-2-and-news-round-up/<p>Today, both Nicosia and Croydon received updates to 1.5.2. This is the
same patch-level Tempelhof had at launch. As such, please find all
changes and updates in <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/2010/08/16/tempelhof-takes-off-for-airlinesim/">the respective
announcement</a>.</p>
<p>Besides this, we'd like to use this opportunity to point your attention
towards some topics that might have been neglected due to the release of
1.5 and the launch of Tempelhof.</p>
<p><strong>Upcoming development</strong></p>
<p>After the development of 1.5, which lasted about one year, we are now
shifting to a lower gear for a few weeks to gain some fresh energy for
AirlineSim and other projects. But don't worry: After this vacation we
will work towards reaching our old update schedule. This is: One
maintenance release each month containing bugfixes and minor features
and improvements.</p>
<p>Concerning the longer term goals for AirlineSim we are still evaluating
the various possible and wished-for features we got on our list. For
now, what AS 1.6 might look like and when it will be released is
completely up in the air though.</p>
<p><strong>AirlineSim Holiday Event 2010</strong></p>
<p>It's almost become a tradition already: After our previous christmas
events in Vienna and Dresden, this year we will meet in Nuremberg. The
event is a non-aviation, family-friendly meet-up that takes place in a
beautiful city with a traditional christmas market. This year's date is
Saturday, the 18th of December.</p>
<p>Please sign up on
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=151243964887090">Facebook</a> and or
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?p=11745">on our
forums</a>.</p>
<p><strong>AirlineSim on Twitter and Facebook</strong></p>
<p>For those who missed it so far: AirlineSim and simulogics are present on
both Facebook and Twitter. We use these channels to release tiny updates
and bits of information that do not warrant an own entry on the portal
or in the forums. You can follow the Twitter streams without having an
account yourself by using the Twitter website or and RSS reader. These
are our profiles:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://twitter.com/airlinesim">AirlineSim on Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.facebook.com/airlinesim">AirlineSim on Facebook</a></li>
<li><a href="http://twitter.com/simulogics">simulogics on Twitter</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.facebook.com/simulogics">simulogics on Facebook</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Don't forget: Every now and then we publish voucher codes for free
credits on these profiles!</p>Tempelhof takes off for AirlineSim!2010-08-16T16:09:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-08-16:blog/2010/08/16/tempelhof-takes-off-for-airlinesim/<p><em><span style="color: #999999;">This is an official press release
intended for immediate release. If you are a press outlet and require
additional information, please contact <a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;&#109;&#101;&#100;&#105;&#97;&#64;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#117;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#105;&#99;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#101;&#116;">&#109;&#101;&#100;&#105;&#97;&#64;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#117;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#105;&#99;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#101;&#116;</a>.</span></em></p>
<p>Online aviation simulation AirlineSim
(<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/">www.airlinesim.aero</a>) is pleased to be
able to present, from the 16th of August 2010, its third international
game world. Known as "Tempelhof", it will provide up to 1200 users with
the opportunity to manage their own virtual airlines in a detailed and
realistic global economic environment. The new game world will run the
latest version of AirlineSim's server software, currently at version
1.5, which provides a greatly improved player-oriented interface, an
expanded range of statistical data and improvements to the economic,
flight planning and management systems. "Our simulated passenger and
freight distribution system has been made significantly more detailed
and transparent", says Martin Simons, lead developer of AirlineSim;
"These improvements, combined with real traffic data from airports all
over the world, give players a realistic backdrop to airline management
that you won't find in any other browser-based multiplayer online game."</p>
<p>While the hardware and software are state of the art, the game world's
name looks back to the history of aviation. Tempelhof is the name of the
famous inner-city airport in Berlin, one of the icons of 20th century
aviation even after its 2008 closure. "There was never any doubt that we
would name a game world after Tempelhof", says Sascha Kunert; "Since we
name all our game worlds after former airports, it was only a matter of
time. We had perhaps expected to use the name for a German-speaking game
world, however."</p>
<p>Instead, Tempelhof is expected to become the first AirlineSim game world
to operate in a truly multilingual environment, with players given the
ability to change the game's display language. "Up to now, because of
the way the servers are set up, we've been restricted to one language
per game world", says Martin Simons; "With the lifting of that
restriction, we have plans to add support for a variety of languages.
While we're not in a position to make any official announcements as to
which languages are expected yet, our very international community, now
over 2000 strong, is helping us with the translations."</p>Third international game world starts today2010-08-16T08:53:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-08-16:blog/2010/08/16/third-international-game-world-starts-today/<p>Rumors have been floating around the forums and elsewhere for quite a
while, but now it's official: A new game world will launch later today!
We will start the game whenever the technical setup is ready and last
minute issues have been addressed. Therefore expect the doors to open in
the late afternoon, European time.</p>
<p>The new game world - the name will be officially announced as soon as
it's opened - will run the latest patch level 1.5.2 and bleeding-edge
master data (airports, aircraft etc.). These facts are worth knowing if
you are interested in playing on the new server:</p>
<ul>
<li>The game will run on a standard configuration (all aircraft, all
airports, ground networks enabled).</li>
<li>The initial passenger demand has been slightly reduced for the
start-up phase and will be adjusted as the amount of
players/airlines grows.</li>
<li>Some airport and aircraft characteristics differ from the existing
game worlds.</li>
</ul>
<p>At this point I'd like to point your attention towards a policy that has
been common practice for quite some time, but has never been officially
announced: From 1.5.2 we will do data patches in a way that will not
worsen the situation of any single player in a harmful way. Prime
examples for this are changes in airport size or the addition of new
nighttime bans, both of which cause major disturbance to the schedules
of any airline operating out of the affected airports. Updates like
these will only be applied to new game worlds, while existing ones only
receive positive or neutral changes (extended runway length, more slots,
updated demand etc.).</p>
<p>For a complete list of changes, new features and bugfixes contained in
1.5.2, please read on.</p>
<!--more-->
<ul>
<li>Defect #549: Wrong generation of ground networks</li>
<li>Defect #554: Check layout of stock page</li>
<li>Defect #555: Cosmetic: A/C condition colour different</li>
<li>Defect #586: Maintenance partner not changed on company reset</li>
<li>Defect #588: Check if transport-rights for VIA Fights are ok</li>
<li>Defect #594: Named item search returns wrong match quality</li>
<li>Defect #595: Sort order for shareholders</li>
<li>Defect #600: Influence of employee mood in the flight rating system</li>
<li>Defect #604: Discount on multiple ac-order</li>
<li>Defect #610: Problem to fire staff</li>
<li>Feature #550: Deleting Threads within the Alliance Discussion Board</li>
<li>Feature #552: Slotlink within Flight Number Scheduling</li>
<li>Feature #575: Mark aircrafts not able to carry full possible
pax-no. even with 100% MPL</li>
<li>Feature #583: Mous-Over - Time Information</li>
<li>Change #601: Make game ready for fresh installs</li>
</ul>One less bug, one more feature2010-08-13T07:52:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-08-13:blog/2010/08/13/one-less-bug-one-more-feature/<p>After the launch of AirlineSim 1.5, we were made aware of some problems
with <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/wiki/index.php/Tutorial/1.5/Expert_Knowledge/Traffic_Rights">Traffic
Rights</a>
as applied to the improved via-flight feature. In short, the second
segments of any such flights that didn't have traffic pickup rights were
running empty, regardless of any passenger demand between the origin and
the final destination. Happily, the cause of the problem was easy to
find - an important part of the new AS1.5 flight system had not been
made to take via flights into account.</p>
<p>Fixing the bug was simple, but fixing it also presented an opportunity
to add a new feature, which AirlineSim has so far been missing. In real
life, some airlines operate 'mini hubs' at airports abroad; examples
include operations by South American airlines in Spain, European
airlines in Florida or American airlines in Asia. The airlines have the
ability - assuming no additional agreements exist between the second and
third countries - to carry passengers from Country A to Country C with a
change of flight in Country B without picking up additional passengers
in B, effectively enabling them to create connection-based networks at
airports outside their own countries. This ability will now be available
in AirlineSim, too - hence the 'feature' part of today's title.</p>
<p>Operating a 'mini hub' is not for the faint-hearted; airlines still
won't have the ability to carry local traffic on the second leg of the
flight, so the advantages - and costs - of operating these extra flights
will have to be considered very carefully, and in many cases it will be
more efficient to make use of a local partner to carry any connecting
traffic, but the option will be available for those situations where
such partners are unavailable or unattractive.</p>
<p>It's worth noting, in addition, that the via flight function only needs
to be used in situations where 5th Freedom rights are available for
onward flights; for example, between countries which are parties to the
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/wiki/index.php/Tutorial/1.5/Expert_Knowledge/Traffic_Rights">Yamoussoukro
Decision</a>.
If 5th Freedom traffic isn't a concern, regular flights that aren't
explicitly via the intermediate point will also work fine. Of course,
you may want to use the feature anyway - using it saves a flight number,
and will probably offer the possibility of a dedicated technical stop in
the future.</p>Patch 1.5.1 installed2010-07-29T15:53:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-07-29:blog/2010/07/29/patch-1-5-1-installed/<p>The new version 1.5.1 has just been installed on all game worlds. Major
changes include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Several fixes concerning route management</li>
<li>Mail interface should be more stable</li>
<li>Local time fixes in flight planning interface</li>
<li>Display of minimum prices on flight info page</li>
<li>Possibility to ignore non-price settings when changing prices of a
route (this also fixes the issue of flight settings being erased by
the pricing tool)</li>
<li>News filters can be stored and applied to the front page</li>
<li>Various tweaks to the rating of multi-segment connections and travel
time</li>
<li>And all kinds of smaller fixes and tweaks.</li>
</ul>
<p>You might have to hit F5 once on the route and news-filter page to
reload changed CSS files.</p>
<p>Please report any issues you might come across via the usual support
channels.</p>Upgrade to AirlineSim 1.5 completed2010-07-20T13:36:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-07-20:blog/2010/07/20/upgrade-to-airlinesim-1-5-completed/<p>We are happy to announce that the upgrade of all five game worlds to
AirlineSim's latest version 1.5 went about smoothly and has been
completed successfully. At this point I'd like to express our sincere
appreciation for the work that has been put into this endeavour by our
team of supporters! Without their countless hours of work on things like
the completely revised tutorial for AirlineSim 1.5, we wouldn't have
been able to achieve what we have reached today. Also, we'd like to
thank the many testers who looked for and reported issues during the
alpha and beta testing stage. We are confident that the effort of all
who participated in achieving this milestone will pay off as the best
version of AirlineSim that has existed to this day!</p>
<p>A few more words about the patch itself and the further actions: Even
though AS 1.5 has been tested for a very long time, small issues right
after launch are to be expected. If you come across any problems, please
report them to our support address (support@airlinesim.aero) or on the
forums. Currently known issues include wrong timezones for airports
within sub-hour timezones (like India, 4.5h) and a problem affecting the
new FRS that rates direct connections worse than multi-segment flights.
We will look after these and any other issues as soon as possible and
will issue hotfixes respectively.</p>
<p>We hope you enjoy AirlineSim 1.5! Have fun!</p>Last minute info about tomorrow's patchday2010-07-19T22:19:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-07-19:blog/2010/07/19/last-minute-info-about-tomorrows-patchday/<p>We are only hours away from AirlineSim's biggest update in years. So let
us give you some last minute information on how the patchday will take
place.</p>
<p>We have decided to upgrade all game worlds, including the German ones,
in an alphabetical order. Consequently the sequence looks like this:
Croydon, Devau (German), Idlewild (German), Kaitak (German) and Nicosia.
Each game world requires several hours to be patches put we will run
more than one upgrade in parallel.</p>
<p>As such we expect the whole procedure to be over on the 20th. Thank you
very much for your patience and your understanding!</p>AirlineSim 1.5 will launch on July the 20th2010-07-06T18:07:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-07-06:blog/2010/07/06/airlinesim-1-5-will-launch-on-july-the-20th/<p>It's been nine months since we announced the development of AirlineSim
1.5. That development process, we're happy to report, is coming to a
close, and we're planning to release AirlineSim 1.5 two weeks from now -
on the <strong>20th of July</strong>, to be exact.</p>
<p>AirlineSim 1.5 is the most significant game update since the
introduction of the current generation of the game. The flight-planning
system has been revised completely, and now offers a much clearer
planning interface as well as a stable implementation of indirect
routings, or 'via' flights. The new flight rating system is being
implemented at last - this will make ratings for both individual flights
and connection opportunities much more transparent, and in doing so will
offer new opportunities for players to compete in a busy airline
marketplace. Additionally, a new statistics system is being introduced,
which will make available to the player more - and more detailed -
statistics and analysis, with more to come further into the 1.5
development sequence. Also of importance is a significant change to the
way firms are structured: 'Holdings' have taken on a special role as
unsaleable parent companies, but can take on the roles of operating
businesses - flying aircraft, constructing and owning buildings, and so
on. What are currently operating airlines - 'Enterprises' - are likewise
able to act in most ways as holding companies do now - purchasing and
owning shares, owning subsidiary companies, etc.</p>
<p>Although these represent the most important changes, they are not the
only ones. Besides the introduction of a completely new user interface,
significant optimisation has taken place with regards to geographical
data, players' ability to customize the layout of their interface and
much more! We're very optimistic about the success of this update,
considering the time and effort which have been invested in it and,
importantly, the very significant amount of user testing we've been able
to accomplish - something we haven't always had the opportunity to do.</p>
<p>Many of you will be familiar with AirlineSim 1.5 as a result of
participating in one of these user tests. For those of you who aren't -
and for anyone who needs a refresher - we'll be providing information
regarding potential gameplay effects of the changes and how you might
consider approaching them to all accounts currently registered on active
servers, through the in-game message system. If you have any further
questions, of course, our <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums">forums</a>
and <a href="mailto:support@airlinesim.aero">support service</a> are as always at
your disposal.</p>
<p>Concurrently with the update, we'll be introducing some changes to the
game rules themselves, to be considered applicable two weeks from now -
in other words, when the update has been introduced. A complete list of
changes is
available <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?t=1646">HERE</a>.</p>Beta test for 1.5 has started2010-05-15T19:16:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-05-15:blog/2010/05/15/beta-test-for-1-5-has-started/<p>We proudly announce the launch of the release 1.5 public beta-test! All
data from existing game world nicosia have been converted to this new
server and release. This means - if you already have an account and
airline on nicosia, you will find your airline on the test-server too.</p>
<p>Your way to the public beta-test:
<a href="http://stapleton.airlinesim.aero/">http://stapleton.airlinesim.aero</a></p>
<p>And of course some faq regarding the beta-test:</p>
<p><strong>1.) How long is the public beta-test intended to last?</strong><br />
We're planing a beta-test period of three weeks. Due to maybe found
errors or problems it might be shorter or even longer.<br />
<strong><br />
2.) Is there any tutorial for the new release?</strong><br />
No, not at the moment.All wiki-pages are still based on the 1.3
release. But we're working on it!</p>
<p><strong>3.) Why can't I find my fleet, flights etc.?</strong><br />
There is no difference between holdings and enterprises anymore.
Therefor your current company selection might be the former holding,
where is no airline business. Simply change the company/enterprise on
the header bar.</p>
<p><strong>4.) Why are all booked flights (flight instances) deleted?</strong><br />
Due to the conversion of the release 1.3 data to 1.5 all booked flights
have to be cancelled. The system is now starting like the flights would
have been all new. This is also necessary for the new flight rating
system.</p>
<p><strong>5.) Does the system books passengers and freight like in release
1.3?</strong><br />
No, the flight-rating system is completely new. Therefor you should
avoid to high prices and reduce them to a "normal" scale. Flights with
200% prices might not be booked.</p>
<p><strong>6.) May I delete a former holding?</strong><br />
Every company/enterprise - also the former holding may be deleted. But
by deleting an enterprise you may also delete subsidiaries where this
enterprise is a major stakeholder.</p>
<p><strong>7.) Do I have to pay for the beta test?</strong><br />
No - the public beta test doesn't cost you any credits. But you have to
register an account and your account mustn't have a negative credit
balance.</p>
<p><strong>8.) Where to report bugs or errors?</strong><br />
Like any error or bug - simply send us an e-mail to
<a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;&#115;&#117;&#112;&#112;&#111;&#114;&#116;&#64;&#97;&#105;&#114;&#108;&#105;&#110;&#101;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#46;&#97;&#101;&#114;&#111;">&#115;&#117;&#112;&#112;&#111;&#114;&#116;&#64;&#97;&#105;&#114;&#108;&#105;&#110;&#101;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#46;&#97;&#101;&#114;&#111;</a> - please don't forget to mention the server
(Stapleton) and enterprise.</p>
<p><strong>9.) Is there any "known-bugs" overview?</strong><br />
Not at the moment. But we will provide one.</p>AirlineSim 1.5 Beta test to start this week2010-05-10T19:09:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-05-10:blog/2010/05/10/airlinesim-1-5-beta-test-to-start-this-week/<p>We are currently planning to launch a public beta test of our new
version 1.5 later this week. Although there is no exact date yet, here
are some early bits of information you might be interested in.</p>
<p>The first and most important part of the test is the "patching process".
To test this we will use current live data from
<a href="http://nicosia.airlinesim.aero">Nicosia</a>, install it on the public
test-server and upgrade it to the new version 1.5. After the upgrade,
the simulation will continue running as it did before but with the new
flight rating system (FRS) in action. As all existing flight instances
will be deleted in the process, airlines will miss about 3 to 4 days of
bookings and a considerable part of flight operations. All newly created
flight instances will be rated by the new flight rating system, so the
new ratings will be a lot more price-sensitive even in no-competition
scenarios. If you manage an airline on Nicosia and want to take full
advantage of the testing we recommend you save up some money and set all
your flights to standard prices (you should be fine if you operate below
default prices already) to avoid going bankrupt.</p>
<p>After the test has been started we intend to run it for at least two to
three weeks. Getting over the disturbance brought about by the patch is
expected to take airlines about a week alone and we calculate about
another week for the FRS to catch on. Consequently everybody should have
quite a good idea about the effects of the upgrade after three weeks.</p>
<p>During the Beta test we will operate a special board on the forums for
you to post your ideas, feedback and possible issues. We will
continuously update the test world and fix bugs as they appear. As soon
as we think that the new version is ready for a release, the test world
will be resetted and made the first regular 1.5 game. The updates for
existing servers will follow shortly after, given that no unforseen
problems prevent it.</p>
<p>Please excuse the fact that we can only use the live data from one game
world, giving a slight advantage to those playing on Nicosia. We decided
that a test would only make sense in a saturated market and we cannot
afford to run more then one free server at a time (testing the Beta will
not cost you any credits!).</p>
<p>More information on the test will be posted as they become available. We
recommend you follow us on either
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/airlinesim">Facebook</a>,
<a href="http://www.twitter.com/airlinesim">Twitter</a> or both for smaller updates
not worthy of a blog post.</p>Video time! The new AS 1.5 interface2010-05-06T14:08:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-05-06:blog/2010/05/06/video-time-the-new-as-1-5-interface/<p>It's been a while since we released a video about the upcoming
AirlineSim 1.5. So here it is, the third video in a series about the
features and improvements the new version will introduce. This time we
focused on an in-depth introduction to the completely revised interface
of the game. But see for yourself!</p>
<p><object width="400" height="300"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11519789&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1"></param><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11519789&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object></p>
<p>As usual, we recommend to watch the video <a href="http://www.vimeo.com/11519789">directly over at
Vimeo</a> for better quality and larger
screen size.</p>
<p>Some words on the content for the impatient: The new interface was
redesigned with three key goals in mind. Firstly we wanted to slim down
the header and the navigation to require less space. AS is a highly
complex airline simulation and as such we need as much space for actual
content like large tables or charts as possible. Secondly we wanted to
improve usability and generall accessibility of the main features and
places within the game. The icon-based navigation now looks a lot less
cluttered and the sorting by topic makes it easier to find the feature
you are looking for quickly. Last but not least we wanted to bring the
visual design up to current standards worthy of a modern, web-based
management game.</p>
<p>We sincerely hope you enjoy the changes and we look forward to your
feedback! In the meantime we are hard at work to open AirlineSim 1.5 for
a public Beta some time around next week. So stay tuned!</p>Summer. Airplanes. Amsterdam!2010-04-11T22:41:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-04-11:blog/2010/04/11/summer-airplanes-amsterdam/<p>What's better than a combination of warm, sunny weather, the smell of
burned kerosene, some heavy metal passing over your head, plenty of good
food, some cool beers and long discussions with fellow aviation geeks
about your favorite airline simulation? Can't think of anything? We
neither!</p>
<p>Summer is coming and we will have our traditional summer meet-up! For
the first time ever the event will take place in the wonderful city of
<strong>Amsterdam</strong>, Netherlands, with the official part of the meeting
commencing on <strong>August the 7th, 2010</strong>. Usually there is some inofficial
get-together on the following day for all those who don't leave the day
before already.</p>
<p>As mentioned above and contrary to our city events (like <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/london2010">London
2010</a>, don't forget to sign up!),
the event is supposed to have a somewhat strong aviation focus. As usual
though, the program is more or less open and we look forward to your
suggestions on how we can make this a fun event for everybody! We invite
anyone to <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?p=9625#post9625">join the
discussions</a>
on our forums.</p>
<p>For those of you who are on Facebook, we have also created an event page
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113641138654557">HERE</a>!</p>
<p>See you in Amsterdam!</p>AirlineSim moves into new Frankfurt office2010-04-01T07:55:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-04-01:blog/2010/04/01/airlinesim-moves-into-new-frankfurt-office/<p><span style="color: #ff6600;">April Fools! These news are of course
imaginary.</span></p>
<p>The International version of AirlineSim has been a great success so far,
having outpaced our growth predictions significantly. However, as you
all know, growth can't take place in a vacuum - some level of
infrastructure is needed to keep things organised. Therefore,
simulogics, the parent company through which we operate AirlineSim, will
be opening its first physical office sooner than planned. It's great
news for us, and of course it would be wrong not to give the project an
aeronautical theme. Therefore, we will be renting a complete floor in
the old air traffic control tower at Frankfurt airport, previously used
for aircraft gate assignments and soon to be on the head office and
nerve center for simulogics - and, of course, a place where our faithful
players can drop in to say hello!</p>
<p>Besides the offices for our seemingly ever-growing team, we will be
installing a lounge in the front of the building, with a view over the
airport apron. For a charge of a few credits players will be able to
shorten their wait time until their flight departs, and even use the
lounge to discuss new features with the developers who will show up
occasionally. We aren't aware of any other gaming companies that have
achieved such a seamless fusion between an online game world and the
real world, and we're looking forward to the exciting new opportunities
it will bring both to our team and to our players.</p>
<p>As the contract with FRAport has not been finalized, details on the
subscription and entry costs to the new player lounge are not available
just yet. However, current AirlineSim players are advised to get in
touch with us via <a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;&#102;&#114;&#97;&#64;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#117;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#105;&#99;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#101;&#116;">&#102;&#114;&#97;&#64;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#117;&#108;&#111;&#103;&#105;&#99;&#115;&#46;&#110;&#101;&#116;</a>, as we're holding a <strong>prize
draw</strong> for tickets to the opening celebration! The exact date of the
meeting is yet to be announced, but will definitely be a weekend in
order to maximise the number of players we can accomodate.</p>Bye bye, holdings!2010-03-27T15:40:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-03-27:blog/2010/03/27/bye-bye-holdings/<p>This week I implemented, more or less spontaneously, one of the most
radical changes in the history of AirlineSim. This change was - just as
spontaneously and also as an answer to some elementary questions on
AirlineSim's future - decided on the weekend before, at the weekly
AirlineSim team meeting. Accordingly, I want to inform all players who
aren't participating in the current alpha test about this change and its
impact on the game.</p>
<!--more-->
<p>The change sounds quite simple at first: Holdings were eliminated. In
fact, it was a severe intervention which took more or less 5 days to
complete and will almost certainly cause bug or the other for a
significant time, but the benefits almost certainly make it worth it.</p>
<p>So, how will AirlineSim look like without holdings? In the future,
holdings will just be enterprises, being able to do everything your
airlines can use today: buy planes, plan flights, construct buildings
and so on. The difference is that, at the same time, they retain the
ability to hold subsidiary enterprises and deal in shares. I will
explain how this can be used practically using an example below.</p>
<p>Of course, holdings won't disappear after this step. If you register
your first enterprise, it will get a "holding flag". This means that
this holding-enterprise will always be under control of your account and
can never be listed on the stock-market. Therefore, it will take over
the original holding's role and is consequently crucial for the
subsidiary's traffic rights. Also, the old anti-cheat rules concerning
transactions between several holdings in one account will persist.</p>
<p>The considerably faster access to the game is the important advantage of
this model. On a revised registration page you can register an
enterprise and start playing within just a few minutes. A manual
screening will only be necessary in exceptional cases, such if our
automatic checking system has found high similarities to real or in-game
enterprises.</p>
<p>But as announced above, let me give a brief example:</p>
<ol>
<li>Start playing: You register an enterprise and give it the name "Dodo
Airlines". You lease 2 or 3 airplanes and start your flight
business. After playing as usual, your enterprise has gained some
respectable size.</li>
<li>After some successful days/weeks you decide that your airline
requires a feeder-network. Because you don't want to have the
maintenance categories within your mainline and also prefer a clean
corporate structure, you found "Dodo Regional" as a subsidiary of
"Dodo Airlines".</li>
<li>[not yet realized, but possible feature] The mainline further grows
and you plan to go public soon. Hence you found another subsidiary,
let's call it "Dodo International". You transfer aircraft and
flights from "Dodo Airlines" into the new enterprise, which will
from now on operate the business.</li>
<li>As planned "Dodo International" is going public and you are gaining
new capital. The dividend goes to the new shareholders and "Dodo
Airlines".</li>
<li>With the dividend "Dodo Airlines" buys the cargo-airline "Emu Cargo"
but soon gives up the business due to unsatisfying profitability.</li>
<li>Meanwhile, "Dodo International" has to face rising competition on
some sectors and therefore decides to found the low-cost spin-off
"Kiwi". Hence, "Kiwi" is an enterprise on third level. "Kiwi"
belongs to "Dodo International", which belongs to "Dodo Airlines".</li>
<li>[not yet realized, but possible feature] "Dodo International" has
become a member of "The Birds" alliance. The members decide to found
a handling company which is directly responsible to the alliance.
From the alliance's liquid funds, "The Bird's Ground Services" is
founded, which constructs and runs its own terminals at 5 of the
alliance's hubs. [Remark: This example was only chosen to illustrate
that alliances can technically hold shares while they can't be sold
themselves. How this feature could be implemented in the future is
still completely open.]</li>
<li>"Dodo Regional's" results are unsatisfying. After an initial public
offer, "Dodo Airlines" sells all shares except for 10%.</li>
<li>After intense restructuring, "Dodo Regional", which in the meantime
has founded a local airline for niche markets named "DuckAir",
achieves a better performance. Consistent with the new business
structure, "Dodo International" buys 30% of the mother's former
regional subsidiary and becomes the enterprises biggest shareholder
[Remark: Hence, "DuckAir" became an enterprise on level 4].</li>
<li>Unfortunately, the Dodo-group now only holds 40% of "Dodo Regional".
Given that all other shareholder are domiciled abroad, traffic
rights were lost on some routes. Therefore, you decide on a
gentleman-agreement with a fellow player and CEO of "Cat Airways",
which is located in the same country as the Dodo-enterprises, that
he gets involved in "Dodo Regional" with 11%. The traffic rights
have been secured.</li>
</ol>
<p>You could go on like this forever. Theoretically, there are no limits to
the shareholder-tree... it would be possible to have enterprises on
level 10 or below. The technical precautions against circular relations
have been made but still have to be tested intensively. The same applies
for the unfortunately necessary anti-cheat mechanisms.</p>
<p>That's the report for now. I hope it has caught your attention for 1.5.
Assuming that this post has produced more questions than answers, I'm
looking forward to discussions on our forums or the chat!</p>
<p>Have a happy weekend!</p>AirlineSim on your phone?2010-03-19T08:55:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-03-19:blog/2010/03/19/airlinesim-on-your-phone/<p>I know that a lot of you are already using smart phones (like the
iPhone), netbooks and other more or less mobile devices to access online
content. All these devices have in common, that they feature a very
small screen and largely different input methods compared to regular
PCs, which often makes using legacy websites a pain.</p>
<p>Of course, AirlineSim is no exception in this matter, but developing a
specific interface for mobile devices is a lot of work and requires
special skills, epecially with a data-boasting game like AS.</p>
<p>Therefore I'd like to know how many of you are already using AS from
mobile devices or wish to do so. This information might help us decide
whether it would be worth the effort to create a new additional
interface for mobile devices or whether it would suffice to adjust the
existing one.</p>
<p>We have started a <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?t=1335">poll on the
forums</a> and we
would be glad if you could spare a few minutes to cast your vote and to
let us know what you think about the topic. Thank you!</p>Alphatest for 1.5 is about to begin2010-03-01T12:02:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-03-01:blog/2010/03/01/alphatest-for-1-5-is-about-to-begin/<p>We just finished sending out the repsonses to the many applications we
received for the soon-to-start closed Alpha test. Those who were
accepted received an email containing all the details you need to get
started. Please note that it might take a few hours to days until we
have prepared all the involved systems for the test.</p>
<p>Overall about 100 people applied to take part of whom we picked 25
lucky individuals who will be taking part in the test. The effort and
detail many of you put into your applications was amazing and made it
tough for us to decide. For those of you who received a rejection let us
asure you that your effort is appreciated and that you should definately
try again next time!</p>
<p>Just to point this out once more: We picked the candidates by several
factors including technical specifications of the employed client
system, experience level (both "high" and "low" are important), previous
testing experience and others. Of course a certain random component was
added as well to ensure a broad mix of different combinations.</p>
<p>This Alpha test is intended to prepare the next major milestone of our
airline simulation for a public Beta test which will hopefully start
within a few months time. For those of you who cannot take part in the
tests themselves we will provide as many details from the test world as
possible.</p>AirlineSim goes to London!2010-02-27T16:18:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-02-27:blog/2010/02/27/airlinesim-goes-to-london/<p>This year AirlineSim will open the traditional event season with its
first international meet-up in <strong>London</strong>! The event will take place on
<strong>May the 8th</strong> and will allow all attendees to get to meet fellow
players and team members in real life. We are still discussing the
details of the program, which will include touristic and
aviation-centric parts, on the forums. So if you got some ideas you
think are noteworthy,
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=27">participate</a>!</p>
<p>For all the details covering the event, check out our dedicated minisite
at
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/london2010">www.airlinesim.aero/london2010</a>.
It provides hotel recommendations as well all information on how to
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/london2010/signup.php">sign up</a>. If you
posess a Facebook account you might also be interested in our <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=83877407076#!/event.php?eid=10150100375925548">official
event
page</a>.</p>
<p>We are extremely excited about our first ever international event and
looking forward to meeting you in London!</p>Coming up: Closed Alpha Test for AirlineSim 1.52010-02-17T11:58:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-02-17:blog/2010/02/17/coming-up-closed-alpha-test-for-airlinesim-1-5/<p><em><span style="color: #ff6600;">The application period has ended. Please
do not send in any further applications.</span></em></p>
<p>Most of you are probably aware of the fact that we have been hard at
work to finish AirlineSim's next major milestone, namely <strong>version
1.5</strong>, which will bring along features like an <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/?p=166">advanced flight planning
system</a> and the integration of
alliances into the game (finally!), among others.</p>
<p>Of course we won't let these new features slip into the wild untested,
so we are organizing a closed alpha test. This means we will grant
access to a bleeding-edge development version of the airline simulation
to a selected group of users which will allow us to do final tuning and
polishing before the game is releases as a Beta. If <strong>you</strong> wish to
<strong>participate</strong>, please find all the details after the break!</p>
<!--more-->
<p><strong>Why is the Alpha a "closed" one?</strong></p>
<p>The game is still under heavy development. Many parts are not completely
finished yet, sometimes lacking smaller utility features or final screen
design. Also, users will probably encounter a lot of bugs and other
problems that need to be properly reported. To ensure that this is the
case we want to keep the group of testers both small and qualified.</p>
<p><strong>Who can take part in the Alpha Test?</strong></p>
<p>In theory, anybody can take part in the test. We will try to pick users
with different platforms, browsers and backgrounds though to allow for a
wide array of tested client configurations. We will prefer known members
of the community to some extend, but we will grant access to some who
might not be experienced players yet to test for user interface issues.</p>
<p><strong>What will testers have to do?</strong></p>
<p>Just that: Test! This is not to be confused with playing: Testing tends
to be hard work occasionally. You will be testing an early development
version of AirlineSim and thereby encounter many glitches and bugs, not
a finished product! It will be your task to document those issues and to
help the team in resolving them. Of course you will be welcome to
suggest further improvements or changes. Either way you will stay in
close contact to the team and the developers.</p>
<p><strong>What information do you need?</strong></p>
<p>If you apply for the test, please add the following information to your
application:</p>
<ul>
<li>The nickname you use in the community (your Aquila account name)</li>
<li>Your operating system</li>
<li>Your preferred browser(s)</li>
<li>Your estimated experience level in playing AirlineSim</li>
</ul>
<p>Naturally, the more details and information you provide the better!</p>
<p><strong>So where to apply already?!</strong></p>
<p>If you wish to apply, please send an email to
<a href="&#109;&#97;&#105;&#108;&#116;&#111;&#58;&#97;&#108;&#112;&#104;&#97;&#116;&#101;&#115;&#116;&#49;&#53;&#64;&#97;&#105;&#114;&#108;&#105;&#110;&#101;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#46;&#97;&#101;&#114;&#111;">&#97;&#108;&#112;&#104;&#97;&#116;&#101;&#115;&#116;&#49;&#53;&#64;&#97;&#105;&#114;&#108;&#105;&#110;&#101;&#115;&#105;&#109;&#46;&#97;&#101;&#114;&#111;</a> including all the information specified
above (or more). The application phase will end next week on <strong>Friday,
February the 26th</strong>. You will be notified about whether you are in or
not as soon as possible.</p>
<p>Please note that the stated email address is <strong>the only channel</strong> to
send in you application! Please refrain from sending in applications via
the chat, on the forums or even via ingame/forum messages. They will be
ignored without exceptions!</p>
<p><strong>Any further questions?</strong></p>
<p>If you wish to know more about the alpha test or the upcoming version
1.5, please don't hesitate to post your questions on the
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums">forums</a> or on our <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/portal/?page_id=27">chat
room</a>.</p>Apply for the upcoming User Advisory Board elections2010-02-12T11:50:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-02-12:blog/2010/02/12/apply-for-the-upcoming-user-advisory-board-elections/<p>We will soon start the elections of the next five members entering the
User Advisory Board, a unique institution of AirlineSim that helps keep
our virtual airline simulation world free of cheaters. If you wish to be
part of this panel you can hand in your application
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?t=1149">here</a>. The
application phase will end on Thursday the 18th.</p>
<p>The User Advisory Board is intended to be "by the community for the
community" to avoid biased decissions by AirlineSim team members and
supporters in cases of cheating and general misconduct. If you volunteer
to become a member of the board you can ensure that your voice and that
of the community as a whole is heard. Further details about the User
Advisory Board in general can be found
<a href="../../forums/showthread.php?t=599">here</a>.</p>AirlineSim won a Webbies 09 Award!2010-02-05T13:40:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-02-05:blog/2010/02/05/airlinesim-won-a-webbies-09-award/<p>We are extremely proud to announce that AirlineSim made the first place
in the "Best Online Innovation" category of this year's <a href="http://www.flightglobal.com/page/webbies-2009/">Webbies 09
Award</a>. This is what the
<a href="http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/02/05/338088/webbies-2009-winners-and-judges-comments.html">judges had to
say</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The judges liked AirlineSim best. The site provides an airline and
aviation enthusiast the opportunity to step inside the industry to
understand its dynamics up close and simulates real-world fuel costs
and its own stockmarket to inject genuine financial dynamics into the
complex world of simulated airline operations. The judges said: "If
it's not already used as a tool in business classes for those studying
airline dynamics and operations, it should be."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Our congratulations go out to
<a href="http://www.emptylegmarket.com/">EmptyLegMarket</a> and
<a href="http://seatexpert.com/">SeatExpert</a>, the two other winners in our
category, and of course all other contenders who took part in the
contest. We are exceptionally glad to be a part of this great community
of aviation enthusiasts!</p>We made the Webbies 09 Shortlist!2010-01-27T12:10:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2010-01-27:blog/2010/01/27/we-made-the-webbies-09-shortlist/<p>Woohoo! It was quite a surprise when we figured out yesterday that our
little airline simulation had made the <a href="http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flight-international/2010/01/webbies-09---the-shortlist.html">shortlist in three
categories</a>
of FlightGlobal's Webbies 09 Award! We still can't believe it and are
looking forward to the announcement of the winners in the first week of
February. Big thanks to FlightGlobal and their team for the nomination,
we feel honored!</p>
<p>We are extremely excited about this nomination, since FlightGlobal
probably represents one of the most important media entities in
aviation. We're keeping our fingers crossed...it's going to be an
awefully long week ;-)</p>And the winners are...2009-12-28T10:56:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-12-28:blog/2009/12/28/and-the-winners-are/<p>We took a short break from the busy world of airline management to spend
some time with family and friends. I sincerely hope you did the same and
spent some great days with your loved ones. Nevertheless, today is
Monday and we are back at work!</p>
<p>The first thing to take care of is if course the somewhat delayed
announcement of the winners of our latest and final Holiday Quiz. The
winners this time were <strong>xolon</strong>, <strong>litschi</strong>, <strong>Passi-ham</strong>,
<strong>Alliarden</strong> and <strong>Austrian</strong>. Congratulations! You will receive your
paysafecard vouchers shortly via your account on the forums. We hope you
enjoyed our little Holiday Countdown!</p>Holiday Countdown 2009 - Part 22009-12-13T10:59:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-12-13:blog/2009/12/13/holiday-countdown-2009-part-2/<p>Another week has passed, another quiz is waiting to be solved! This time
we thought of a few questions about aviation and AirlineSim that should
be easy to answer for any airplane geek and/or airline simulation fan.
To win one out of five 10 EUR
<a href="http://www.paysafecard.com"><strong>paysafe</strong>card</a> vouchers you need to
correctly answer as many questions as possible. Good luck and have fun!</p>
<p>Find the questions and instructions here:
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?p=6265#post6265">Click!</a></p>Holiday Countdown 2009 - Part 12009-12-06T02:39:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-12-06:blog/2009/12/06/holiday-countdown-2009-part-1/<p>This holiday season we are organizing some brainteasers for you to
shorten the wait. The first of our three quizzes is now online on our
forums. You can find it here:
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?p=6009#post6009">Click!</a>
To get the chance of winning one of five <strong>paysafe</strong>card vouchers worth
10 Euro you need to identify as many airports shown in the pirctures as
possible. The vouchers will be raffled among the top contenders in case
of a tie, otherwise they will be distributed by score. Have fun!</p>Holiday Countdown 20092009-12-02T15:48:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-12-02:blog/2009/12/02/holiday-countdown-2009/<p>AirlineSim's first "international year" is slowly coming to an end. And
whenever a year is over it's time for presents! Of course this is also
the case for our favourite airline simulation, except that we want to
have some fun on top. So for this year's holdiday special we have
decided to host three quizzes on December the 6th, 13th and 20th
respectively. The different quizzes will cover various topics from the
world of AirlineSim, including aviation and the game itself. Every
single quiz will be announced again here and via all other channels
(like <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/AirlineSim/83877407076">Facebook</a>
or <a href="http://twitter.com/airlinesim">Twitter</a>) whenever they are online,
including details on how to participate. They will take place on the
forums which you easily access as soon as you <a href="https://secure.simulogics.net/aquila/app/register">have created an Aquila
account</a>.</p>
<p>So what about the presents? We are happy to announce that
<a href="http://www.paysafecard.com"><strong>paysafe</strong>card</a> is supporting this year's
holiday special: On any of the three days we will give away
<strong>paysafe</strong>card vouchers, each valued at 10 Euro, to five lucky
participants who found the correct answers! You can use those at any
outlet that accepts <strong>paysafe</strong>card...including AirlineSim of course!</p>
<p>That said we are looking forward to this year's holiday season and hope
you enjoy yours as well...wherever on the globe you might be located and
what festival it is you are celebrating! Happy holidays!</p>The first international User Advisory Board2009-12-01T10:11:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-12-01:blog/2009/12/01/the-first-international-user-advisory-board-for/<p>The elections are over and we are happy to welcome the first members of
the User Advisory Board. <strong>TimS</strong>, <strong>FabianCR</strong>, <strong>seppenberger</strong>,
<strong>Notna</strong>, <strong>BarbulaM1</strong> and <strong>vasco</strong> will be members for one year
(12/2009-11/2010). They will be granted access to the internal forums of
the User Advisory Board within the next few days and will play an
important role in ensuring that AirlineSim stays a fair game and your
favourite airline simulation! Thanks to them for their effort! As you
probably noticed there are six new members although only five seats were
originally available. This is because BarbulaM1 and vasco received the
same amount of votes, so we expanded the board to six seats and the next
elections in three months will be reduced to four.</p>
<p>Unfortunately we had a case of voting fraud because of which one
candidate was not accepted as a member although he seemingly gathered
enough votes. He will also be excluded from all future elections to the
board. Since he informed us about this ahead of our own investigations,
there won't be another penalty.</p>User Advisory Board elections2009-11-23T12:35:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-11-23:blog/2009/11/23/user-advisory-board-elections/<p>AirlineSim might be a pretty realistic airline simulation, but afterall
it is a management game. And games are supposed to be fun. Unfortunately
there are always some who take it too seriously and who cause damage to
other players for their own benefit. Obviously we are talking about
cheaters.</p>
<p>When playing a card game it is easy to define the term "cheating":
Having an ace up your sleeve clearly makes you a cheater. In AirlineSim
this is quite a bit more difficult and very much up to personal opinion.
Because of this, we cannot let moderators or other team members punish
potential cheaters by themselves. There has to be a clearly defined
process of filing a complaint, investigating a case, finding an
approriate sentence and executing the latter. The community should be
involved in this process as a sole team decission will always be biased.</p>
<p>To guarantee the proper employment of such a process we established the
socalled <strong>User Advisory Board</strong> in the German community. Now that the
English one has grown to a decent size we also want to introduce the
same system here. The first step on the way to a dedicated
English-speaking User Advisory Board are the elections to the first five
seats on the board. As a player of AirlineSim you should make use of the
opportunity to participate in this election to make your voice heard.
You can vote for as many of the 13 candidates as you wish
<a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?t=710">HERE</a>.</p>Have a look at 1.5's new Flight Planning System2009-11-18T14:53:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-11-18:blog/2009/11/18/have-a-look-at-1-5s-new-flight-planning-system/<p>Except for the launch of <a href="http://croydon.airlinesim.aero">Croydon</a> it
has been rather quiet around here over the last couple of weeks. So lets
break the silence! We've been working hard on one of AirlineSim 1.5's
biggest new features: The flight planning system! It will completely
change the way you do your scheduling in AirlineSim. We have also
integrated the first parts of our new design which will be introduced
alongside the new milestone. Since a picture says more than a thousand
words, find a video of the new feature after the break. Oh, and the guy
talking with the funny German accent would be Martin...</p>
<!--more-->
<p><object width="400" height="300"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><param name="movie" value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7682510&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1"></param><embed src="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=7682510&amp;server=vimeo.com&amp;show_title=1&amp;show_byline=1&amp;show_portrait=0&amp;color=&amp;fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="300"></embed></object></p>
<p><a href="http://vimeo.com/7682510">First glimpse at AirlineSim 1.5 (flight planning
system)</a> from
<a href="http://vimeo.com/airlinesim">AirlineSim</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com">Vimeo</a>.</p>
<p>I recommend you to watch the video directly on Vimeo or to download the
file from there in order to get a bigger view size.</p>Croydon has started!2009-11-09T09:09:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-11-09:blog/2009/11/09/croydon-has-started/<p>As you can see, <a href="http://croydon.airlinesim.aero">Croydon</a> just took to
the skies!</p>
<p>We will try to ensure that your holdings and enterprises are screened as
fast as possible through the whole day. Please understand that this
might not always work depending on the numbers of new players signing up
at one time. Thank you for your patience!</p>Croydon launch: The exact times2009-11-08T21:36:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-11-08:blog/2009/11/08/croydon-launch-the-exact-times/<p>I know everybody is excited about tomorrow's launch of our second game
world Croydon. So here is the exact time the server will "take off":</p>
<p>Croydon will launch tomorrow, Monday the 9th of November, at <strong>8:00 AM
UTC</strong>.</p>
<p>For your convenience: This is exactly 0:00 AM Pacific Standard Time,
3:00 AM Eastern Standard Time, 9:00 AM European Central Time and 4:00 PM
in Hong Kong.</p>
<p>On launch the server will show up in the game world list on the right,
so you can't miss it! Have fun playing AirlineSim - the only online
airline simulation of its kind!</p>Launch of Croydon and adjusted testing schedule2009-11-02T10:04:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-11-02:blog/2009/11/02/launch-of-croydon-and-adjusted-testing-schedule/<p>We had two kinds of questions coming in over the last couple of days:
"When will testing begin on Croydon?" and "Why can't I sign up with the
game?". So we thought about how we could answer both of them and came to
a conclusion: The new <a href="http://www.airlinesim.aero/wiki/index.php/Flight_rating_system">flight rating
system</a>
will be the last big addition to 1.3 and we want it to be stable and
balanced when it's rolled out. But at the same time we don't want our
fans to be kept from playing because
<a href="http://nicosia.airlinesim.aero">Nicosia</a> is full. Consequently we
decided that we will go ahead with the launch of Croydon based on a
proven version of the game -- namely 1.3.21b -- that's already running
on Nicosia. The recently announced test with real life data from Nicosia
will be postponed until we are actually happy with the flight rating
system and until we are confident that we can introduce it on existing
servers without causing too many turbulences.</p>
<p>So now you're probably wondering about a launch date? Well, here it is:
<strong>Monday, November 9th, 2009</strong>. The configuration will be more or less
the same as on Nicosia, but will include some data patches concerning
airport data and maybe some fixes to the aircraft database.</p>Big scale testing2009-10-26T09:52:00+01:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-10-26:blog/2009/10/26/big-scale-testing/<p>Most of you have probably already seen some of the screenshots of the
new flight rating system. While these changes sure look nice they also
lead to some major disturbance in a running game world. All flights will
be rated differently and the booking behaviour of the virtual passengers
might change considerably.</p>
<p>Due to this we will do some large scale testing before we introduce the
patch on Nicosia. The German community is already familiar with this
process: We take all the live data from Nicosia, import it into
AirlineSim on our new server Croydon and deactivate credit costs for the
system. Within about 24 hours the server will show up in your Aquila
dashboard. If you had an account on Nicosia before you will be able to
access Croydon and see how the new patch affects your existing airline
and its operations.</p>
<p>We will transfer the data sometime today and testing is supposed to last
at least one week. Please note that the patch will delete all your
booked in flights. They will be re-entered into the system to update the
flight ratings but will be empty. Also some flights might be cancelled
because the aircraft are left at wrong airports after the update. Please
keep these issues in mind, especially for the actual patch we will be
announcing in time.</p>
<p>As tests with data from a German game server have shown, you'll be able
to see dependable figures after about 4 to 5 days the latest as that's
when your company's image has formed and the booking cycle is running
regularly again.</p>
<p><span style="color: #ff9900;">EDIT: We will postpone the test for at
least one or two days as we want to do some more tweaking before letting
the beast into the wild.</span></p>
<p><span style="color: #ff9900;"><span style="color: #0000ff;">EDIT 2:
Still working on some tuning which will probably take another week. We
try to get it done as soon as possible.</span><br />
</span></p>The road ahead2009-10-20T14:30:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-10-20:blog/2009/10/20/the-road-ahead/<p>It's been four months already since AirlineSim took on the international
stage. Since then we've launched a brand new portal, build a small but
nice community and are about to start our second game world. Time to
take a look at the things to come: It took some time and plenty of
discussions, but here we are to present the versions of AirlineSim to
see the light of the day over the coming months and beyond.</p>
<!--more-->
<p>Originally our ideas for "AirlineSim 1.4", the next milestone
in AirlineSim history, were bold: A complete rewrite of the interface,
many deep changes to the system and an overall reworked gaming
experience. After several months of working on the game full-time we
came to the conclusion: They were too bold. Most of the time available
we had (and wanted) to spend on improving the current version of
AirlineSim, leading to more new features and improvements as we had
expected to be possible. At the same time we were hardly able to get
beyond <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/?p=86">some fundamental work</a>
on Airlinesim 1.4, pushing the release date further and further into the
future, essentially rendering our "great milestone" to be
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware">vaporware</a>.</p>
<p>But not evrything about these developments is bad of course! Luckily we
came to the conclusion that our 1.3-branch comprises too many hours of
hard work, too many features and far too many good ideas to just throw
it overboard and replace it by a completely new, untested system that
probably takes years to finish and leaves the community without new
features for a long time.</p>
<p>Because of this we have deciced to completely review our planning. The
result looks like this:</p>
<p><strong>Version 1.3</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>We will keep on maintaining our current version about the way we did
it over the past months, fixing bugs, adding smaller improvements
and optimising larger parts of the game towards better balancing.
This might lead to some bigger disturbances of the game as we might
touch important systems like the upcoming flight rating system or
demand distribution. Such changes will be tested and announced in
advance to keep problems to a minimum.</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Version 1.4</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>To avoid confusion we decided to skip this version. There will never
be a Version 1.4 of AirlineSim!</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Version 1.5</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>The dubious "Version 1.4" is renamed to 1.5. We learned from our
mistakes and defined a list of must-have features that justify the
opening of a new branch. The most important and most desired of
those features will be Alliance and Marketing.</li>
<li>1.3 and 1.5 will share the same technological basis which puts the
focus on new features and less on interface changes. In theory this
might even allow for a switch to 1.5 without a reset, but this will
depend on the grade of change the new features bring about.</li>
<li>The work we put into 1.4 so far isn't forgotten: We will try to
implement as much of the new tech into the existing platform as
possible.</li>
<li>Since we are not doing a complete rebuild of the game, we expect the
release cycles to be much shorter than originally planned. It won't
take years until 1.5 is released. Probably on of the biggested
advantages of the revised roadmap!</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Version 2.0</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>To keep it short: There isn't any planning or work in progress on
this one! 2.0 is merely supposed to be the name of a potential new
AirlineSim that we might develop in the future, somewhat the way we
intended to develop 1.4. But as I said, this is a dream of the
future and work on it won't begin before we haven't realized at
least one other project.</li>
</ul>Focus: The recommendation feature2009-10-10T15:53:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-10-10:blog/2009/10/10/focus-the-recommendation-feature/<p>Not long ago Aquila, our central account management system, got its
first major update since the launch of the international AirlineSim
community. One of the bigger new features was only mentioned as a
sidenote so far: The friend recommendation feature.</p>
<p>The way it works is both obvious and simple: After entering the name and
email address of a friend, we send an invitation to your buddy, asking
him whether he wishes to try out AirlineSim. If he signs up, enjoys the
game and buys at least 300 credits, we'll give you <strong>100 credits</strong> as a
little thank you <strong>for free</strong>! By doing this you will support the
development of AirlineSim and, as a positive side-effect, your friend
will most likely be grateful for the heads-up as well.</p>
<p>If you wish to spread the word, simply <a href="https://secure.simulogics.net/aquila/app/account/recommendUs">click
here</a> (you
need to be signed in). In case you have questions or comments regarding
this feature and its purpose, please drop us a note here or on the
forums.</p>Stay connected: AirlineSim on Twitter2009-10-01T09:08:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-10-01:blog/2009/10/01/stay-connected-airlinesim-on-twitter/<p>There are often tiny bits of information that are not worth to publish a
news post or to create a new thread on the forums for. Nevertheless
these information might be useful, intersting and/or important to you.
These could be small bugfixes outside of the regular patch cycle,
technical hick-ups or noteworthy events in the community. To make it
easy for you to follow these things when you don't happen to be a <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/?page_id=27">big
chatter</a>, we have created
an account with <a href="https://twitter.com/airlinesim">Twitter</a>. We will keep
this stream updated with all these small things you'd miss otherwise.</p>
<p>As we are at it: You might have noticed the new "Follow us" box on the
right side of the page. There are other networks we and our fans are
using and we will try to complete the content of this box over time. If
you happen to be an active member of a social network or similar site
and you run an AirlineSim group or community there, please let us know
and we'll be happy to add a link to it. You know where to find us ;)</p>Patch to Version 1.3.21b and Aquila update 1.0.12009-09-29T07:23:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-09-29:blog/2009/09/29/patch-to-version-1-3-21b-and-aquila-update-1-0-1/<p>Nicosia was patched to the latest version just a few minutes ago. On top
of that we prepared a new update for Aquila, our central account
management platform. Primarily this update consists of two new features:
A recommendation feature which allows you to tell a friend about
AirlineSim and thereby earn free credits as well a long anticipated
account deactivation feature. Please note that both new addons are still
in testing, so please report any bugs or problems you may encounter to
support@airlinesim.aero. You can find the complete list of AirlineSim
changes after the break.</p>
<!--more-->
<h1>Version 1.3.21b</h1>
<p>BUGFIX: Wrong method to determine aircraft equality in travel
generation<br />
BUGFIX: Corrected wrong titles of passenger/cargo statistics<br />
BUGFIX: Name changes of holdings/enterprises on approval could lead to
the same name existing twice<br />
BUGFIX: Several textual changes and corrections<br />
BUGFIX: Suppressed aircraft sales and aircraft leasing between holdings
of one account<br />
BUGFIX: Entering too long names for service profiles could cause
uncaught exception<br />
UPDATE: Flight schedule link in an airport's office list directs to an
airport-specific schedule<br />
UPDATE: More than one fleet action at the same time possible<br />
UPDATE: NOW BOARDING status on departure boards dependant on aircraft
size<br />
UPDATE: Additional accumulated figures on flight info page<br />
CHANGE: CHECK IN status removed from departure boards<br />
CHANGE: Aircraft trader only offers aircraft already delivered for
leasing/sale<br />
CHANGE: Only one holding per account may subscribe to any IPO<br />
CHANGE: Adjusted loan formula does not count cash as security<br />
CHANGE: Redone method to set salaries<br />
CHANGE: Balance sheet total has to amount to at least 50 million AS\$
to be allowed to act as aircraft lessor<br />
CHANGE: Interest and repayments for loans that cannot be paid for are
not added to the loan anymore<br />
NEW: Transfer flights can be scheduled using a fleet action<br />
NEW: Additional operating figures for listed enterprises (P/E ratio,
Return on Equity and others)<br />
NEW: Display of average salaries on country page<br />
NEW: Employee mood</p>Upcoming: New staff features2009-09-25T08:22:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-09-25:blog/2009/09/25/upcoming-new-staff-features/<p>Since AirlineSim first appeared based on our currently employed
technology, the human resources features have been nothing but a shadow
of their former self. When doing the switch from the old framework to
the new one, some parts of AS simply went overboard due to time
constraints or because they were simply "overlooked". So as promised on
the forums and elsewhere, this topic will be one of the last big ones we
will definately tackle to some extend in the 1.3 branch.</p>
<!--more-->
<p>Obviously nobody wants his staff to be on strike form one day
to the other. So with the upcoming patch the first thing to be
integrated will be some sort of "mood index" for your staff. This index
will be without effect for the moment, so no strikes, no influence on
your product whatsoever. It's merely intended to show you where you
stand at the moment and you will have plenty of time to adjust your
settings before additional features like strikes are implemented in some
future patch. For your viewing pleasure (if that term is appropriate in
this case), please find a small glimpse at the new feature in the
screenshot below.</p>
<p>[singlepic id=15 w=320 h=240 float=center]</p>
<p>So what's new here? First of all, the way you set the salaries has been
changed. At least in respect to the interface: Although your salary
settings have always been applied at the end of the week and never had
an effect during the week, now you officially set the new salaries for
the next week. The setting of last week remains visible and is used for
calculating country-wide averages. Next and best visible is the "mood
indicator". It ranges from -5 to 5 and gives you a rough estimate about
the mood of your workforce. Note that the upper limits are a cut-off: If
the mood rises or falls below these limits it won't be displayed. On the
right of the indicator you see a slope icon whic tells you whether the
mood improved last week, went worse or remained unchanged.</p>
<p>Similar to the salaries, the mood of your staff "changes" just once a
week (on payday, to be exact). These changes accumulate over time. If
you treat your staff badly over several consecutive weeks, the mood will
fall continuously even without a decrease in salaries. Of course, this
works in the opposite direction, too. The consequence of this is that
you cannot undo the mismanagement of serveral weeks by paying an
above-average salary once (unless maybe it is extremely high!). When the
new feature will be integrated it will be interesting to see how all the
airlines will adjust their salary-levels. The mood is greatly based on
the average wages of the country the enterprise operates from. So we
might see some real-world application of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory">game
theory</a> ;). I'm looking
forward to it and I hope you do so too! Let me know what you think.</p>
<p><em>The changes mentioned above will be integrated with the upcoming patch
to version 1.3.21b which is still scheduled for the 29th of September.</em></p>Bringing AirlineSim to the market2009-09-19T13:56:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-09-19:blog/2009/09/19/bringing-airlinesim-to-the-market/<p>It has been a while since I last reported from the hangar. That's
because the "hangar" now is an actual office. Well, in some way at
least: I moved to a different city which kept me away from doing
AirlineSim-related work for a few days but on the other hand resulted in
a new appartment with my first ever dedicated room just for work. Within
this environment my favourite daily schedule would look something like
this: get up late, grab some coffee and unhealthy food, lock myself into
the office, do programming all day long, chat with the team and fans
every now and then, leave the office at some late hour of the day.
Unfortunately, besides the fact that my girlfriend would probably be
gone after a few days of practicing this schedule, there are many more
aspects to "making AirlineSim" than just writing the code.</p>
<!--more-->
<p>Let me take yesterday as an example. I didn't write a single
line of code but dealt with something that's somewhat new to the
project: Marketing. For years AirlineSim has been a hobby project. There
was no definite goal for finishing the game or reaching other
milestones. Everything was more or less done for our own and the fan's
amusement. High player-numbers were a nice-to-have but not something we
would put a lot of energy into achieving. Now that the game needs to pay
our bills, things look slightly different. Player-numbers translate to
revenue, revenue (hopefully) translates to profit, profit translates to
food on the table and a roof overhead.</p>
<p>So far, most to all of our players found us via web forums or other
forms of word-to-mouth advertising. Every now and then we posted some
news on major German browsergame portals and the size of our publisher
in Germany came in handy, too. It was no different with Nicosia and the
server just filled up to a decent level without us doing much. With the
upcoming second game world, I expect things to be different. We need to
actively spread the news about AirlineSim or otherwise the project will
remain where it is today in terms of size. Keeping in mind that the
primary goal right now is a steady revenue stream able to support life's
expenses of two persons, avoiding such a stand-still is a must.</p>
<p>So what I did yesterday was a first step to a somewhat structured way of
doing marketing. I don't see us spending big bucks on advertisements any
time soon, so the easiest and cheapest thing to do is expanding the PR.
This means, building up a list of contacts within game portals and other
news sites that might publish news from and about AirlineSim. The
difficult thing for me was that the international market is completely
new to me. I had no clue about what websites are relevant to the
browsergame-scene internationally. Consequently it took me almost the
whole day to gather a few dozen email addresses of editors. Whether they
will report about us when we first publish a press release (like the
launch of the next game world) remains to be seen. Also, the focus is
placed on English-speaking aviation and flight simulator portals right
now while I know from our statistics that there are many players who
found us via Greek, Dutch or other sites. If you happen to know sites
that might be interested in our press releases, please let me know in
the comments. And in case you operate one yourself don't hesitate to
<a href="mailto:media@simulogics.net">email me</a>!</p>
<p>After this tedious work I will try to connect the marketing-efforts and
my desire to do programming in that I will implement some features into
Aquila that allow you to mail a recommendation to play AirlineSim to a
friend (or preferably, many of them). For you this means free credits
whenever a new member is admitted this way and buys a minimum amount of
credits. At least that's what my plans look like right now. Let me know
what you think!</p>Our next game world: Choose a name!2009-09-18T09:40:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-09-18:blog/2009/09/18/our-next-game-world-choose-a-name/<p>Our server maintance went about flawless so the downtime probably was
hardly noticed. While I'm at posting here anyway, I want to guide your
attention towards a poll on our forums which you are invited to
participate in:</p>
<p>Soon our second international server will see the light of the day. And
as all our servers, this new one will of course be named after a now
defunct airport of some relevance to commercial aviation. We have put
together a list of five such airports and now it's up to you to pick
your personal favourite. So <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/forums/showthread.php?t=355">head over to the
forums</a> and make
your vote!</p>Scheduled downtime, September 18th2009-09-17T17:13:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-09-17:blog/2009/09/17/scheduled-downtime-september-18th/<p>I want to inform you that Aquila (our account management system) and
Nicosia will be down for maintenance tomorrow. We expect the downtime to
last around 20 to 30 minutes if everything works as anticipated. Thank
you for your understanding.</p>Next Patch: Targets & Testing2009-08-31T17:48:00+02:00prairiecentraltag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-08-31:blog/2009/08/31/next-patch-targets-testing/<p>Now that most of the kinks have been worked out of the international
side of things, it's time to start thinking about the next patch. This
one is likely to be quite a lot of work, and as a consequence of that
we're looking at doing some open testing before we set it loose. The
preliminary release date for the next patch is the <strong>29th of September
2009</strong>. This is <strong>not a definite date</strong>; depending on how the testing
goes it could slip a bit, but the 29th is the current target date.</p>
<!--more-->
<p><strong>Why all the fuss?</strong></p>
<p>Well, we unearthed a pretty major error in the part of the program that
handles passenger distribution; specifically, it turns out that the
smaller airports, which shouldn't have been handling passenger
transfers, were doing so. This was exacerbated by the the 1-leg travel
bug; somehow the combination of the two created a situation where
passengers could switch between flights in as little as five minutes,
the end result of which being that transfer time restrictions were
rendered effectively meaningless.</p>
<p>That this has been going on for so long without being noticed much is
obviously something of a shock; the cause was buried in an apparently
unrelated piece of code, and so managed to escape detection for a while.
However, the primary objective of this next patch is to fix it, so we
should have a much more realistic passenger environment once we're done.</p>
<p><strong>What'll you see out of the next patch?</strong></p>
<p>There are likely to be a few immediately obvious effects; passenger
connections at very small airports - that is, those which don't
currently have an indicated minimum transfer time - will no longer take
place. Since the connections in question have been essentially invisible
so far this may be more of an issue than seems immediately obvious,
particularly for airlines with a large number of interlining partners;
at the same time, passenger connections at hubs will be following the
stated transfer rules much more closely, so ensuring that there is
enough time between flights for transfers to occur in these places will
be more critical than ever.</p>
<p><strong>How do we test these changes?</strong></p>
<p>A duplicate of the German 'Kai Tak' server has been uploaded to our
internal test server, Woomera. This server is integrated with the German
Aquila account administration system, so you'll need to have an account
on that system if you wish to access it. If you do, you can find the
server on your Aquila account administration page. Please take into
account the following points regarding the test server:</p>
<p><strong>·</strong> Using an existing Kai Tak account on the test server is free; no
credit charge will be applied.</p>
<p><strong>·</strong> New holdings and airlines will not be activated.</p>
<p><strong>·</strong> Please bear in mind that odd behaviour, performance bottlenecks,
bugs and server resets may be encountered at any time!</p>
<p>The ultimate goal of this whole process is to test the fixes to the bugs
mentioned above in a busy but reproducible and relatively static
environment; with this in mind, please refrain from making major changes
to your airlines on the test server for the time being. This will be an
ongoing process, and the end result of it should, ideally, be the
production of effective fixes to these bugs that do not result in
disruption to the active servers. Please bear in mind, however, that
such disruption may still occur, as the German servers in particular
have been working without these restrictions for quite some time.</p>
<p>Comments or questions regarding this information are welcome either on
<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/forums/index.php">the game forums</a> or through
the <a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/?page_id=27">live chat system</a>.</p>Back to testing2009-08-28T17:57:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-08-28:blog/2009/08/28/back-to-testing/<p>AirlineSim used to have a comprehensive set of automated tests. This
means, most functions of the game had at least one corresponding test
which ensured the respective function behaved as it's supposed to. The
big advantage of this approach is that you can easily test hundreds of
different situations with a simple click of a button. If you apply a
change to something at one end of the system which breaks some
functionality at another end it's likely to show up in one of the
automated tests.</p>
<!--more-->
<p>But due to some major changes to the system as a whole, namely the
integration with our single-sign-on and account management system, and
pretty tight time constraints we dropped automated testing a few months
ago. Yes, I know...if you are into any kind of serious development
you're feeling an inner scream and the urge to fall into spontaneous
shock. I admit that this choice is never a good one, no matter how tiny
the time budget might be. And in fact developing AirlineSim without this
safety net was a major pain.</p>
<p>So obviously this had to be changed. Yesterday I checked out our
existing test suite from version control and started fixing all the bugs
that developed over time due to changes in interfaces and dropped
functions. After a few hours of work all tests were running without
errors. It's still missing a whole lot of tests for new functions that
have been added to AirlineSim during the past few months, but it's
definately better than nothing.</p>
<p>Today I extended the suite by some tests for our travel generation
system, visible to the player as the ORS. Originally I wanted to create
a stable sample to do essential performance tuning. But the tests
brought about exactly the result automated tests should deliver: Unknown
bugs! In this specific case I realized that the "no flight switching at
airports smaller than medium size" rule essentially didn't come into
action. Quite a few users reported figures that pointed towards such a
problem but due to the complexity of the systems involved it was never
actually proven to exist.</p>
<p>One small test, many big consequences. As everybody who has some
experience in playing AirlineSim will have figured already, the
corresponding bugfix will have major influence on the game: All
passengers who switched flights at small airports won't do so after the
next patch, large airlines based on this false behaviour will face huge
problems as their complete business model will collapse. We will discuss
internally how to deal with this situation officially. Meanwhile you're
more than welcome to discuss the topic on the forums or the chat and to
let us know about your ideas.</p>Patch to Version 1.3.20b2009-08-27T10:55:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-08-27:blog/2009/08/27/patch-to-version-1-3-20b/<p>Nicosia has been patched to the latest version. Changes this time
include:</p>
<h1>Version 1.3.20b</h1>
<p>BUGFIX: Cancelled and finished flights blocked leasing/sale of an
aircraft<br />
UPDATE: Registration is a link in the list of owned aircraft on
aircraft sale page<br />
UPDATE: All columns of the list of owned aircraft on aircraft sale page
are sortable<br />
UPDATE: Aircraft age is displayed in the list of owned aircraft on
aircraft sale page<br />
UPDATE: Additional information on offices page<br />
UPDATE: Icon marking interlining partners on airport info page<br />
UPDATE: Locked flights are deleted 24 hours after scheduling<br />
UPDATE: In aircraft flight planning the route's service profile is set
to the flight's profile if it has been null before<br />
UPDATE: Operating figues displayed on IPO page<br />
CHANGE: Automatic cancellations cause a penalty<br />
CHANGE: Company update runs more frequently to avoid wrong update
times<br />
NEW: List of all owned buildings and their contracts<br />
NEW: Progress bar at head of page to help new players find their way
into the game<br />
NEW: Display of the 10 most recent trades on stock page</p>
<p>As usual, please let me know what you think on the forums or on in the
comments and report any problems that might occur to our support
address.</p>More payment options in Italy and Poland2009-08-14T10:12:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-08-14:blog/2009/08/14/more-payment-options-in-italy-and-poland/<p>We received news from Ukash today that their vouchers can now be easily
purchased throughout Italy and Poland. But I suggest you just read for
yourself:</p>
<p><em>Ukash is proud to announce that consumers in two of Europe’s largest
cash markets can now get Ukash at point of sale or online.</em></p>
<p><em>1250 epay terminals in independent convenience stores across Italy are
now issuing Ukash vouchers in 10,20,50,100 EUR denominations. And, in
another move to make getting Ukash as easy as possible, vouchers from 10
– 100 EUR are now available online to consumers in Italy with internet
banking.</em></p>
<p><em>Plus, in Poland Ukash is available for the first time at point of sale.
6500 epay terminals in independent retailers can now issue 20, 50, 100,
200, 500, 750 PLN vouchers. This extends the availability of Ukash in
this growing economy beyond the established online issuing from Dotpay.</em></p>Patch to Version 1.3.19b2009-08-11T11:13:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-08-11:blog/2009/08/11/patch-to-version-1-3-19b/<p>Nicosia just received a small patch including the first of some changes
mentioned in the post about last weeks usability tweaking. The detailed
change-log looks as follows:</p>
<h1>Version 1.3.19b</h1>
<p>BUGFIX: Wrong negative sign in bank account (only English version)<br />
BUGFIX: Link to open office displayed for players without active
enterprise<br />
BUGFIX: New Zealand wasn't displayed with untrestricted market access
anymore (only German version)<br />
UPDATE: New Layout for route managemet and flight number pages<br />
UPDATE: Accelerated route change via drop-down menues<br />
UPDATE: Quick access to flight numbers on a route via drop-down menu<br />
UPDATE: Link to flight number from list of booked flights of an
aircraft<br />
UPDATE: New moderator tools in holding/enterprise screening<br />
UPDATE: Prices of own booked flights are displayed on route page<br />
UPDATE: Default prices are displayed next to price adjustment forms for
routes/flight numbers<br />
UPDATE: Direct links from flight info page to flight number, route and
operating aircraft<br />
CHANGE: Assigment of prices and on-board service profiles combined into
one step (flight number and route)<br />
CHANGE: Higher upper limits for taking out loans<br />
NEW: Help/Information tooltips added in some places</p>
<p>Please let me know what you think on the forums or on in the comments
and report any problems that might occur to our support address.</p>Laying a foundation2009-08-07T16:40:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-08-07:blog/2009/08/07/laying-a-foundation/<p>As mentioned in my last post, doing clean-up work like improving the
usability and taking care of the inevitable bug-fixing and
performance-tuning, is tedious. Given the prevalent temperatures and the
fact that it's Friday I decided this afternoon to pick up some stuff I
haven't touched in many months but which is a heck lot more fun than
doing the stuff mentioned above: Developing AirlineSim 1.4. This post
will be geared a little towards the tech-savvy so it might not be of
interest to everyone.</p>
<!--more-->
<p>When version 1.4 was first started it was conceived as a mere
update to the regular development branch of AirlineSim. Think more of
evolution than revolution. But when I showed
<a href="http://wicket.apache.org">Wicket</a>, a framework for developing
web-applications in Java, to the team, it was rather quickly decided to
abandon the old interface of AS completely and rewrite it from scratch
as it offered so many benefits over the technology we used so far. Since
at the time I was still in the finals of my studies and thereby working
in a company full-time, 1.4-development degraded to a side-project and
received hardly any attention. With this period finally being over I
could at least think about our next major version again, but the focus
still remained on the international launch because dream projects
unfortunately don't pay the bills.</p>
<p>So it has been far more than a year since 1.4 was started...an awefully
long period in IT. I had to review whether our plans were still feasible
technology-wise. Therefore I got me a book about <a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_On_Rails">Ruby on
Rails</a>. If reading around
the respective news pages, this framework sets the standards and trends
in web-development right now. At least that's how I perceive it with
large applications like Twitter or Xing being build upon it at least
partially. My intention when buying the book wasn't to learn a new
technology and switch to it, though, but to figure out what all the fuzz
was about.</p>
<p>And the fuzz basically is, once again, about a catchy slogan:
"Convention over Configuration". Which isn't bad though. In fact, the
heavy percentage of configuration work tied to employing powerful
frameworks like
<a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibernate_%28Framework%29">Hibernate</a> or
<a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struts">Struts</a> is immense. So it doesn't
sound like a bad idea to reduce the amount of configuration as much as
possible as it's prone to errors and generally not as well supported by
IDEs as is working in actual code. The Convention over
Configuration-principle is based on the idea that a framework should
work out of the box and without the need for complex configuration when
dealing with standard use-cases.</p>
<p>While Ruby on Rails strictly follows this paradigma it absolutely
doesn't fit my taste. The lack of strict typing pushes it too far into
PHP's direction...a chapter I've happily closed a long time ago. Also,
while the framework offers many little helpers and promises a fast
workflow, it looks and feels a lot like last-generation MVC-frameworks
which are nice for CRUD-operations but are cumbersome to work with when
building complex and appealing interfaces. Maybe I'm not recognizing the
full potential of Ruby on Rails here as I merely scratched the surface
when working through the book. But well, that's my impression.</p>
<p>So I focused on employing technologies I knew and on how I could get
them as close as possible to he principle mentioned above.
Interestingly, this was quite easy. You can create a ready-to-use Wicket
application within minutes using a Maven archetype. Wicket itself does
almost completely without configuration anyway, so not much to take care
of here. Database abstraction has always been done using Hibernate since
the first version written in Java saw the light of the day. Yes, it does
have its caveats, but it's also extremely powerful and, when handled
right, performs very nicely. We used to set-up Hibernate solely via
countless XML configuration files, now I've replaced this mechanism with
Hibernate Annotations which abandons almost all of that and tackles most
cases by convention. To make full use of this feature, I also threw over
board our long-lived guidelines for database schemas: Tables and columns
are now named in a way which hardly requires any mapping between Java
objects and the database anymore. All of these ingredients are stitched
together by
<a href="http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_%28Framework%29">Spring</a> and
voilá...there you got a setup which follows the "Convention over
Configuration" pattern in many to most important aspects.</p>It's usability week!2009-08-05T15:25:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-08-05:blog/2009/08/05/its-usability-week/<p>The last couple of weeks have been a stressful time for the team and me.
Everybody was working towards the launch of the first international
server and basically put aside most other tasks that need to be taken
care of. Now that it has been 3 days since the extremely smooth start of
Nicosia we finally find the time to take a look at other things again.
The first thing that came to my mind on monday was usability. A friend
of mine who had never played AirlineSim before took a brief look at the
game and his first impression was that it was extremely difficult for a
new player to find his way into the game. It's simple things that make
it difficult: realizing that you need to have an airline to open a
branch office, knowing that your airline request has to be screened by a
member of our support team, entering the correct airport codes when
requesting it and getting the correct error message if you don't. Most
of these issues are mentioned somewhere in the tutorial or in the game
itself, some aren't. Either way, all these tiny issues make it difficult
to get started quickly and easily and might scare off any new player
who's not a die-hard aviation geek.</p>
<!--more-->
<p>When looking at the game from a newbie's perspective you
notice the same pattern everywhere around the game: Many features are
tailored to the needs of enthusiastic AirlineSim fans who accept the
game the way it is while other parts of the interface were put in by us
developers once and then left in a "it does what it's supposed to" state
irrespective of any usability flaws. I noticed these shortcomings myself
when I finally got around launching a new airline on Nicosia again...a
first in a long time for me.</p>
<p>That's why I proclaimed the coming days to be usability week! There's
need for quite a bit of fixing and the first area to get a major
brush-up is the flight number and route management. I've noticed that,
when scheduling new flights and working on flight plans, it's sometimes
very cumbersome to switch between the relevant pages and to get to the
information you need quickly. Therefore I've redone the flight number
and routes page respectively. Both got a common header featuring an
easy-to-use route selector and all basic information and links regarding
the route in question. Below that are the tools and tables that have
been there eversince. I cleaned up the arrangement to make it more
compact, added a few additional information<a href="http://airlinesim.4players.de/vbb/showthread.php?t=10167">requested by
users</a> on the
forums and I streamlined some of the operations. For example, you can
now change a flight's or route's prices and service profiles in one go
and you get a well visible status information that the operation was
successful, some detail AirlineSim is lacking in far too many parts of
the game. Overall it's now far easier to switch between flights, routes
and assigned aircraft. Find some screens of the new interface below and
let me know what you think.</p>
<p>[nggallery id=3]</p>
<p>Next on my list are some more links to important related pages during
the flight planning process and an easier entry into the game featuring
better feedback to the player and a clearer interface which is easy to
understand even without having read the manual (although you always
should, of course ;)). As all these changes are not "critical" I might
ignore our usual patchday cycle and update the servers whenever I feel
I'm done.</p>
<p>Maybe it's worth mentioning one of the reasons for the fact that such
important things are often neglected during development: It's tough to
imagine for an outsider what amount of work needs to be put into details
like this. Overhauling the flight number and route pages took me almost
a full day of work time and there are probably still many glitches that
need to be found and fixed. This is partly due to the circumstance that
the framework currently used for AirlineSim is somewhat out of date
which makes it more and more diffcult to deliver the kind of user
experience one is used to from modern web pages. The technological base
of our next major version, i.e. AirlineSim 1.4, will make this part of
development far easier and faster.</p>First game world starts tonight2009-08-02T21:32:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-08-02:blog/2009/08/02/first-international-game-world-starts-tonight/<p>Let's keep it short and simple: Our first international game server will
start tonight! To be exact, the launch time will be Monday, 0:01,
Central European Summer Time.</p>
<p>We will try to ensure quick handling of holding and airline requests
through all of Monday. In case of questions or problems check out the
forums or contact our support. Also we'd be glad to welcome you for a
little "launch party" in our chat room.</p>
<p>Have fun playing AirlineSim and good luck!</p>New payment methods2009-07-30T08:02:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-07-30:blog/2009/07/30/new-payment-methods/<p>Today we were finally able to activate our payment provider for Visa,
MasterCard and PayPal transactions. So if you don't happen to have
access to UKash or <strong>paysafe</strong>card, these payment methods will allow you
to purchase credits from anywhere on the globe. To use your credit card
or PayPal, select "Ogone" in the list of available payment providers and
you will be redirected to their interface to finish the payment process.
Please do not hesitate to contact our support in case you come across
any problems.</p>
<p>Also we are happy to forward the news to you, that Ukash is now widely
availalable in Australia: 11,000 epay terminals will be issuing Ukash in
convenience stores and other locations "down under". Further expansion
of Ukash's in-store sales network is planned for Uruguay, Italy, Poland,
Canada and New Zealand.</p>International launch date2009-07-19T21:27:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-07-19:blog/2009/07/19/international-launch-date/<p>Today we have decided on a relase date for our very first international
AirlinesSim game world and we are happy to announce that we will take
off on <strong>August the 3rd, 2009</strong>. Other than the fact that this day is a
Monday, we are not able to provide any further details about the exact
time the service will be available. But as we are located in Germany we
expect to have everything up and running some time in the afternoon,
Central European Time. We are extremely excited about this event and we
hope to have you on board for this milestone in AirlineSim history!</p>More than pushing a button2009-07-13T08:33:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-07-13:blog/2009/07/13/more-than-pushing-a-button/<p>The fact that our new portal has launched successfully represents the
first finished step on our roadmap to an international version of
AirlineSim. Although this was a lot of work we are certainly far from
finished. By giving you a brief insight into the things ahead of us, I
would like to open our new "From the Hangar" blog, a place where we will
try to show you as many aspects of AirlineSim's "backstage area" as
possible and to keep you informed about current developments. Please
don't hesitate to leave a comment and tell us what you think!</p>
<!--more-->
<p>So what are we working on right now? Some might wonder about
this as obviously there already several AirlineSim servers in
operation...why can't we just "push a button" and thereby start our
first international one? It's a bit more complicated than this.</p>
<p>First of all, AirlineSim has been and still is a socalled Beta. This
means, all features and functions of the game are basically subject to
revision and improvement. It has been in this state for quite some time
now and obviously we'd like to dispose of this label sooner or later.
Therefore we see the launch of a completely new game world in a
brand-new environment as an opportunity to get some major plumbing done
that has been difficult to take care of before. This work focusses on
performance optimization in various corners of the game as well as
gameplay aspects like preventing exponential growth of large airlines.
Unfortunately there are far more issues we'd like to address than time
permits, so right now we're in a selection process to figure out which
features are most important and can be finished within the given time
frame of no more than 3 to 4 weeks. We have already decided that a major
overhaul of the human resources part of AirlineSim will be pushed back
to a patch after the launch as it affects too many different areas of
the game and requires a lot of time both for development and testing.</p>
<p>But brushing up the game itself is just half of the story. Especially
the new account managament system, named Aquila, needs to be integrated
into our existing game worlds since both our German and our
international servers wil run on the same code base. This is more
complicated than it may appear because it means that we have to find a
way to merge all the player's accounts on the three different game
worlds into one in Aquila. This is especially tricky when one and the
same user has used different nicks or email addresses on different
servers.</p>
<p>Beyond the technical things, many organizational tasks need to be taken
care of. This includes finalizing the documentation and translation of
the game, clarifying the last remaining details with payment providers
and doing the scheduling and resource planning for the coming weeks.
Also we need to make sure that the international audience gets to know
about us, as an empty game world won't help in paying our bills.
Therefore we're busy wiriting newsletters, informing game portals and
other online magazines and developing a marketing strategy. This might
sound "big business" at first but is a crucial part of the job if we
want this project to become successul interntionally.</p>
<p>As you can see we have plenty of items on our to-do list. Our internal
goal is to get most of this done or started within the coming 2 weeks as
I'm taking my first vacation in years in the end of July (Yay!!). So
hopefully everything will be ready to go for the pending transition in
Germany after my return. And whenever that took place, there's nothing
keeping us from launching our first international game world.</p>Welcome to AirlineSim...in English!2009-07-08T11:51:00+02:00martintag:www.airlinesim.aero,2009-07-08:blog/2009/07/08/welcome-to-airlinesim-in-english/<p>We've been working long nights for many weeks to make it possible: The
launch of our first ever international website! Although AirlineSim, a
realistic and challenging aviation simulation, has been running for over
7 years in German, it went more or less unnoticed by the crowd of
English-speaking aviation and business game enthusiasts around the
world. This finally comes to an end today!<!--more--></p>
<p>Let us introduce you to our brand-new portal page, featuring everything
a newborn community needs. First of all, there's our central account
management system, which allows for a single sign-on across all areas of
the site. This includes the portal itself, the forums, the wiki and of
course our game servers (as soon as they go online). By registering an
account with this system you automatically acquire a Jabber account,
granting you simple access to our community chat and a quick
communication link to other players. Read more about this feature
<a href="http://en.airlinesim.aero/portal/?page_id=27" title="Information about the AirlineSim Jabber feature">here</a>
and don't hesitate to <a href="https://secure.simulogics.net/aquila/app/register" title="Sign up with simulogics!">sign
up</a>!</p>
<p>Next there's our forums, the number one place to find help, join
discussions with team and community members, and stay up to date with
the latest AirlineSim developments. Don't miss this unique opportunity
to get involved in AirlineSim's future and become a part of our great
community!</p>
<p>Last but not least there's the wiki. Although it will be another few
weeks before our first international game server is up and running, you
might find it interesting to browse around the wiki and check out the
tutorials and information that are already available. We have some
diligent helpers at work bringing over as much content from our <a href="http://airlinesim.4players.de/de" title="German AirlineSim Wiki">German
wiki</a> as
possible. Besides this informational aspect, the wiki is the place for
you to present your own airline and its concept. Check out the German
wiki to find out about the creativity of some enthusiasic AirlineSim
players! You'll be astonished by the level of detail and the amount of
dedication put into these airline and alliance profiles!</p>
<p>After all these nice and useful tool: What about the game?! I want to
play!</p>
<p>In this respect we have to ask for your patience. We are working hard to
get everything ready for the launch of our first international servers
and we're planning on finishing this process by the end of this month.
Keep in mind that AirlineSim arose from the personal effort of
aviation-loving individuals. Now we're making this hobby our day job,
and we want to make the playing experience as flawless as possible.
Therefore we're brushing up the game in many aspects, both technically
and in terms of features, to meet everybody's expectations. As soon as
these changes have been implemented and our German servers have been
updated with the new systems, AirlineSim is ready to take off once
again: In English!</p>
<p>Stay tuned and check this site on a regular basis! We'll keep you
informed!</p>